FAUXMONT with Fred BlogZ

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right. 

Readers interested in some background to events in this post will find it in, Post 10. Tinderbrush and Leticia Lantern, Posted Jan 16, 2011. and Post 92. Goofology Posted by admin 30 Sep 2016

The H bar is quiet.  Two other guests sit at a table near the booth I share with Lou. He is staring at the menu.  He takes his glasses off and looks again.

“Have you checked this menu?”

“No need, you set up a standing order by text, for us on Wednesdays.”

“Right, but take a look, will you?”

“Sure, what are you looking at?”

“Look under Burger and Fries Specials.”

“Okay, that’s sixteen ninety-five.”

“Can that be right?  They were only nine bucks before.”

“How long ago was before?”

“Well, a few years, I guess.”

“There’s a beef shortage, due to droughts out west.”

“You sure it isn’t a tariff?”

“This is homegrown.  Genuine feedlot product, corn, hay, and antibiotics, you know.”

“Where does it say that, Lou?”

“Well, it used to.  I mean they used to brag about American beef, and all that.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“Come to think of it, that was before Brazil started clearing the rainforest for cattle production.”

“Chilling thought, Lou, living beings sold as products!”

“That’s right Fred, it’s kind of an assembly line.”

“Once you call it beef, is it still an animal?”

“It’s a meal.”

“It is certainly biological not silicon simulation!”

“Yes, we seem to have that issue in the White House.”

“Hi, my name is Vince.  I’ll be your server today.”

Lou looks up.

“Hi buddy, haven’t seen you before.”

“Yeah, I started Saturday.”

Where is everybody?”

“Most of our staff are gone.  Still have a couple for evenings.”

“Where to?”

“The Authority for Ethnic Harmony came here last week and took them out the back door.”

“The AEH, huh? You mean they had no papers?”

“I don’t know.  I was away that day, helping Mr. Hoffmann.”

“So, he wasn’t here either.”

“No, he got a phone call from his accountant, and we came back quick.  Once he looked in his personnel files, he got on the phone and was so mad you could hear him out here in the dining room.”

Lou scratches his ear.

“What’s the story?”

“They won’t tell him anything.”

“Sounds familiar.”

“That’s when he called Congressman Bean’s office.”

“Haven’t I seen him in here?”

“Sure, he and Mr. Hoffmann go way back, he and Ms. Flack.” 

“You seem to know a lot for a guy so new around here!”

“Sure, I have known Mr. Hoffmann all my life.  That’s how I got this job.”

“No kidding, what’s the connection?”

“Family, he and my mother are cousins.”

“Okay I get it, but where are all the customers?”

“We can’t serve. We are basically closed except for people with standing lunch orders. What can I prepare for you today?”

“The standing order will be fine.”

“You can have anything so long as it is a ham and cheese sandwich on sourdough, mayo, and a salad with vinaigrette dressing.”

“No burgers?”

“No, I am it, chef, waiter, cashier, and busboy. Oh, and you can have mayo on the salad if you want.”

“That’s good to know.  I’ll stick with vinaigrette.”

“Where did Mr. Hoffmann find you?”

“I was studying biology at PU.”

“You mean you are not now?”

“Right, our project funding was redirected to PU’s AI research.”

“Oh boy!  I have heard a lot about that.”

Vince backs up.

“Say no more.”

“What do you mean, Vince?”

“Like I said, say no more.”

“Well, I heard they made a huge breakthrough year before last.”

“How about beers, gentlemen?”

“Ah, Lou, say no more, means change the subject!”

“Okay, Fred, sorry Vince, I’ll have a Stella Artois.”

“You can have anything so long as it is a can of Bud or Heineken.”

“Vince, seems kind of limited. I’ll have a Budweiser.”

“Limitation is the name of my game.”  Vince turns to me.

“I’ll have a Heineken and your main entre.”

“You got it, gentlemen!”

Vince walks over to the table nearby and hands them the check.

“Lou, I don’t see why the law doesn’t go after the employers of undocumented workers, instead of the undocumented applicants.”

“That would put Mr. Hoffmann on the spot!”

“Well, I would regret that, but people would be less likely to come North if there were no jobs.”

“Business has resources to influence Congress, and the undocumented don’t.”

“Yes, representation is one thing and influence is another!”

Lou seems to be staring into space.

“I am increasingly disoriented by events, lately.”

“Think of this. Mr. Hoffmann is pretty well connected.  I imagine he will get his people back.”

“Not with the Prophet Macadamia and his mafia.”

“The prophet?”

“Yes, the prophet of alternative facts and big solutions.”

“He does have a devoted following.”

“Yes, it’s a clever ploy turning reporters into stenographers.”

“Right, whatever the algorithm called Mac says, is news.”

“It gives me a pain in the truth!”

“You’re not alone there.”

“I just wish we had more company in here. The place doesn’t feel right.”

“Lou, I thought Mr. Hoffmann served everyone.”

“He does, everyone who comes in, but the prophets’ people never do.”

“Except to detain undocumented kitchen staff.”

“I am sure all those people were documented.  He has files!”

“I guess they didn’t have anything on them.”

Lou takes off his glasses and rubs his face.  His prominent black curly eyebrows have been trimmed.

“There’s too much bad news, Fred.”

“Yup, the Prophet is on TV right now entertaining us in his nice simple vocabulary.”

“Not just us, Fred, he has the world watching themselves in his reality TV show.”

“Hi there, fellows, may I join you?”

“Sure, Sofie.”

“You look surprised, Lou, didn’t Diddlie tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“That we are joining you for lunch, except Mr. Liddell is sick so she is waiting for a ride to the vet.”

Lou gets up to let her sit on the inside.  Sofie gathers her blue, pink and yellow translucent shawls, hanging off her shoulders and a green scarf over her head.

“That’s alright Lou.  I would prefer to sit on the end.”

“Haven’t heard from Diddlie.  Have you, Fred?”

“Nothing about lunch today. Glad you could make it, Sofie.”

Lou sits down and moves over.

“How did you get in, Sofie?  This place is closed.”

“I just mentioned your names to Vince.”

“Do you know him?”

“I do now, Fred.”

“Okay, wait a minute.  Vince doesn’t know us.”

“Oh! But he does!”

“Must be from our Wednesday standing order, Lou.”

“That’s right, Fred. I even gave him my card and offered a free reading.”

Lou scratches the back of his head.

“That guy is a scientist, Sofie. Why would he want a psychic reading?”

“I saw his aphasic aura and tuned in.”

“Really!  I mean how?”

“That is my gift.  I told him a reading could help with his migraines.”

“What did he say?”

“He is going to try it.”

“I have to have a talk with that young man!”

“No, Lou, it’s not about magical thinking.”

“What is it then?”

“That is the question! Intuition perhaps. Vince was studying mammalian communication you know.”

“Okay.”

“And being a mammal, I am interested in his findings.”

“So you are into science, Sofie.”

“Oh! for sure! Isn’t it sad? The dark forces have de-funded his work.”

“It’s not all dark, Sofie.”

“Mac appointed Leticia Lantern to direct the Voice of America.”

“Fred, I must tell you that Laticia’s lantern shines a dark light, don’t you agree, Fred?”

“She has fired a bunch of people there.”

Vince comes by with three ham and cheese sandwiches, three salads, two beers, and a can of 7UP, with a glass, for Sophie.

Sophie pulls her green scarf back from her forehead.

“Thank you, Vince!”

“You are welcome.”

Lou’s glasses slip down his nose.”

“I haven’t seen a can of 7UP for years!”

“Fred, it isn’t easy to find but Vince had it in the fridge back there.”

“Yeah, Sophie, you ‘said check the fridge’ and there it was.”

“Vince, you mean Sofie was in your kitchen?”

“The place is closed. It was the only way I could get in.”

“Anything else for you folks?”

Lou’s pushes his glasses back.

“We are good, buddy.”

Vince moves on.

“So, Sofie, you came in through the back just like we did, and then instead of telling you the place is closed, Vince let you place an order?”

“He is a polite and generous young man, Lou!”

“Okay, but how you got in here, and knew we would be here, just beats the hell out of me.”

“Lou, don’t be surprised.  Remember? Diddlie told me a while back you guys have a regular lunch date here on Wednesdays.”

“Diddlie would know.”

 “You see, Lou, sometimes people do the right thing.”

“I guess I have been hearing too much bad news.”

“Well, maybe you have.  And, by the way, lunch is on me, Lou. Thanks  for your help with the roof on Saturday day!”

“You’re welcome!”

“What about you, Fred?”

“Well, you got past all the barriers somehow.”

“Life is full of mysteries, Fred.”

“Yes, it is. Like how did you know there was 7UP in that fridge?”

“Fred, it is my gift.  I didn’t exactly know, I just had a feeling.”

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right. 

Diddly, Boyd and I are waiting for Lark Bunlush to answer the doorbell.  Her red Fiat 500 is covered in yellow oak pollen giving it an orange tinge. The sour smell of mulch rises from a newly delivered pile, blocking the car in.

“I haven’t seen your mom, and she isn’t answering the phone.  What is going on, Boyd?”

“She has been acting weird lately, Diddly.”

“Like what?”

“Like locking all the doors.”

“You mean she doesn’t normally do that?”

“Mom? Normal? What are you talking about?”

“Well, I get that. Fred drove us over to check on Lark. We are both concerned.”

“Mom is depressed, Diddlie.”

Diddlie puts her palms up to her cheeks.“Oh, not again!”

“You mean she was depressed before?”

“Yes Boyd, she went into crisis back at college, then she became an activist.”

“Maybe that was her response to it!”

“Maybe, I think it gave her a sense of purpose.”

“I see she got her spring mulch delivered.”

“That’s on automatic, Did.  The yard guys will be here in a while.”

“How was the California trip, Boyd?”

“Oh! I wasn’t on it, but the last thing Mom said to me was that they didn’t work anything out and then ended the call.”

“Who do you mean?”

“Do you remember Augie Carmichael, Fred?”

“Yes, very well.”

“Lark flew out to see him.”

“Sounds a bit desperate, Boyd.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Aren’t you living here?”

“I was, but I am locked out and hanging with Maynard in DC with the Sorrell sisters.”

“Didn’t she give you a key?”

“Yeah, the wrong one!”

“Do you think Maynard can help?”

“Sure, he should be here pretty soon.”

“Where is he?”

“He dropped me off and went to the store, Fred.”

“Are they on good terms?”

“Oh, definitely, Fred.  Mom knows what a great guy he is and how much he helped me.”

Diddlie taps her phone and tries the front door.

“She is still not responding.”

Diddly and I stand around by the door as she repeatedly calls, rings the bell, and bangs on the door.

Boyd returns from walking around the back.

“Mom is in the living room watching TV.”

“Can you get in?”

“No, the sliding doors are locked.”

“Did you knock?”

“Yeah, I knocked and waved and shouted, but she didn’t look up.”

“Don’t you have a key?”

“No, she gave me the wrong one, remember?”

“Oh, that!”

Diddly opens her red polka-dot purse.

“Shall we go in?”  She is holding up some keys.

“Why didn’t you use your key before? Yeah! Open up, Diddlie!”

“Are you okay with this Fred?”

“I guess so, but I am going to hang back.  You and Boyd go in. Lead the way.”

I follow them in. Lark is sitting on a brown overstuffed leather love seat wrapped in a Pendleton blanket with a Southwestern motif.

She doesn’t look up from CNN flashing messages across the room, some commercial, some commentary, and some sound bites at high volume. 

Lark doesn’t look up from the TV.

“Welcome to the latest reality TV show, our chief executive.” Macadamia is on screen boasting about millions of deportations.

Diddly walks over, past a stack of carry-out bags stuffed with litter. She sits down next to Lark and embraces her.

“Sweety, will you please turn that thing off.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No, Lark.”

“This is it. A Hollywood production, a ‘fait accompli’, a cyber coup d’État.”

Diddly reaches for the remote on the arm of the loveseat and turns off the TV.

Lark starts sobbing in Diddly’s arms.

The doorbell rings and Boyd goes back to answer it.

“That must be Maynard!”

Maynard comes in with Boyd, carrying a tote.

“Lark, what is it?”

She stares out the window, past Diddly’s cheek, at the colorful haze of redbuds and dogwoods swaying in front of each other in the breeze.

“That Feather Jackdaw has issued about 125 wacky Executive Orders already and we aren’t even a hundred days in!”

“Lark, they can only be issued by the president.”

“Right, and Feather is programming The Presidential bot getting vengeance against law firms and indiscriminately firing new government employees!”

“Yeah, okay Lark, Okay!”

“There’s a huge humanitarian crisis in Sudan, our bombs destroying Gazza and its people, there’s bombing and war in Ukraine. There are estimated to be about forty million enslaved people in the world today and the planet is heating up. Shall I go on?”

“Why don’t you answer our calls?”

“Their calls are louder than yours!”

“Remember your friends, Lark.”

“What’s the point, Maynard? We have been captured by entertainment and there is no way out of the show!”

“You are looking at the way out.  It’s springtime.”

“That computer program in the White House is opening concentration camps in Salvador for Spanish speakers from South of here.”

“I don’t think we have reached that point yet.”

“Listen this thing is scripted by those crazies at PU and Dreamscape Media.”

Lark is in tears and her blanket falls from her shoulders as she breaks free of Diddie’s embrace to stand up.

“Cover up Mom!”

Maynard steps away.

Boyd strides over, picks up the blanket which has fallen on the floor. Lark is naked.

“What do I need clothes for? It’s hot and I am not going anywhere.”

“You need clothes, Mom!”

She stands still and lets Boyd wrap her in the blanket and Diddlie puts her arm around her shoulders, keeping the blanket in place.

“Come on, sweety, we are going to get you some clothes.”

“Did. I haven’t got anything.  I don’t do laundry.”

“Yeah, I guess you don’t shower either!”

They help Lark out of the room.

I find Maynard in the kitchen.

“Fred, where’s the kettle?”

“I don’t know.  I have never been in here before.”

He holds up a plug-in kettle.

“I am reluctant to use this plastic thing.”

“I get it, nano plastics!”

“Exactly, Fred, heat releases them in molecular hoards.”

We can see a chaotic column of tiny ants moving where the backsplash joins the countertop.

“Fred, looks like we have formic company.”

Maynard stoops down to look under the sink and finds a bottle of Windex.

“Move that packet of chips, would you, Fred?”

I move the opened packet out of the way, spilling some fried potato crumbs and salt. Maynard sprays the invaders.

“That should stem the tide!”

He wipes up the casualties with paper towel and presses some soap into the crack

they emerged from.“Do ants eat soap?”

“Maybe, it is fat.”

“Well, this stuff should keep them at bay long enough for us to get the job done.”

Maynard puts the Windex back under the sink and opens a corner cupboard below the counter.

“Voila!”

He holds up a Revere ware saucepan with a blackened copper bottom.

“This veteran will serve us well!”

He puts water on the stove to boil. Pulls a can of Simpson and Vale’s Earl Grey tea out of a canvas tote.

“Here’s a fine pound cake I picked up at Curd and Grape along with this.” He flourishes a round of camembert and then a packet of pumpernickel.

“See if you can find a plate and knife to slice up the cake.”

Maynard gets some apples and bananas out of his tote and looks around for somewhere to put them.

“I guess this will do.”

He places them carefully on a cutting board from the dish drainer using the curving bananas to corral the apples.

Finally, he pulls out a bottle of Prosecco.

“Maynard, I am concerned about the Augie factor.”

“Yes, I believe he was a factor years ago.”

“It is really too bad those two can’t find a way to be together.”

I have sliced the loaf of pound cake into about a dozen portions and placed them on a blue willow pattern plate from the dish drainer.

“Well done, Fred!”

He breaks off half a slice from the plate I had found. “Let’s try this stuff.

We can celebrate Lark’s recovery with this!”

“Today, you mean?”

“Certainly, today, Fred.  That woman is watching too much TV.”

“True enough. Good thing Diddlie turned off that infernal stream.”

“She has enormous resources.  I am quite certain of it.”

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right. 

Dimbleby Moraboutcha sits on the same bench overlooking the river, off Wicket Street, where I had found him last May.

“Good morning, Dimble.”

He looks up at me, standing next to the bench, and offers me a swig from his large silver flask.

“No thanks, Dimble, I don’t drink until after dark.”

“Why not, are you afraid of something?”

“I need to keep consumption down.”

“Haven’t seen you for months.”

“I’ve been here in Fauxmont. What about you?  What are you up to these days?”

“I have been all over my life, over and over.”

“Dwelling in the past, huh?”

“Dawdling, I would say.  Dawdling with intent!”

“Not a crime.”

“No, my intention is to write.  Right out of memory and on to my keyboard.”

He offers his flask again. “Have a swig, Fred.”

“No thanks, Dimble.”

“I’ll have to go home for a refill before dark, you know.”

“That’s okay.  I can hold out.”

Rank Majors appears from behind the thicket to our right.

“You can take a leak down there, Dimble, plenty of cover.”

“Yeah, okay, my plumbing is fine.”

“Fred, how are you?”

“Not in need of the thicket, Rank, but more than a little worried.”

“You’re retired, aren’t you?”

“Thankfully, yes.”

“Well, the Jackdaws aren’t coming after you.”

“Not yet, at least.”

“Aren’t you concerned, Rank?”

“No! We can shed two-thirds of the government and only be better off.”

Dimble takes another swig from his flask and looks through the humid afternoon air to the opposite bank of the river.

“I think I would rather be over there, so speak, than where I am now.”

Rank steps toward the opposite end of the bench from Dimble and sits down.

“Dimble, you’re a lush!”

“Writers often are!”

“If you say so.”

“Churchill, that old imperialist, said that he got more out of alcohol than alcohol got out of him.”

“What do you see over there, Dimble?”

“Yeah, what indeed, Fred!  Hermione’s return perhaps?  There’s a lot of crows flying over there.”

He points to a flock of crows flying over the water.

“Here, Fred, try this.  It’s good rum.”

“No thanks.  Those crows are circling back!”

“I’ll take a swig.”

“Okay Rank, but make it short.  I need that to last until dinner time.”

He hands Rank the flask who pauses before putting it to his mouth.

“What time do you eat dinner?”

“Whenever I feel like it.”

“So, it is no fixed time.”

“It’s fixed by my appetite.”

“Okay, your biological clock, huh?”

“You might say that.  I would say eat when you feel like it.”

“What are you cooking tonight?”

“I don’t cook.  I use the phone.  It keeps the gas bill down and the risk of fire is reduced.”

“Carryout, you mean.”

“Well, I don’t carry much, though I do carry on in my own way.”

“Yeah, Dimble, that’s a fact.”

Dimble continues to stare across the river and starts mumbling to himself.

A helicopter flies over, drowning out all other sounds.

“What’s that, Dimble?”

“Fred, I was just thinking crows and jackdaws are both members of the Corvid family.”

“You think those crows are telling us something?”

“At first I thought they preferred the other side!”

“Yeah, I was expecting the mist to burn off by now.” Dimble mumbles again refreshing himself from his flask.

Rank is scratching his head.

“Dimble, you are not making sense!”

“Yeah, I am talking through the mist, to myself.”

“Are you in agreement with yourself?”

“That seldom occurs.”

“Do you use social media?”

“Fred, you might as well whisper to a thunderstorm.”

Rank adjusts his red “Macadamia 25” baseball cap, with white letters and a blue peak.

“You should take notice, that’s people’s power!”

“Relatively few people make most of the noise!”

“I guess you don’t go there?”

“No!”

“Do you, Fred?”

“I look at ‘Back Stairs’ for local stuff.”

Dimble belches. “Macadamia blames the other side for doing what he is already doing.”

“Such as?”

“Weaponization, Rank!”

“Meaning what?”

“I mean using lawsuits to extort money.”

“What is Mac to do, after having an election stolen from him?”

“One thing he could do is, shut up!” Dimble raises his flask to his lips again.

Rank stands up and takes a few slow steps looking at the ground and then looks up at Dimble. “Dimble, Mac’s job is to keep that story alive.”

“Why?”

“It keeps his supporters energized to fight socialism.”

“By socialism, you mean the government, by government you mean the executive bureaucracy.”

“By government, I mean a monster that gives away the taxpayer’s money!” 

“The president is part of the government too!”

“Right, too many of them have been going along, and now look at the cost of the deficit.”

“The deficit is a problem alright.”

“Dimble, I am glad to hear you say that.”

“But I must add, ah, ah.”

“Yes, go on.”

“Lost my train of thought.”

Dimble resorts to a restorative swig.

“Ah, yes, I must add that Mac’s smokescreen isn’t going to fix it.”

“Sometimes it takes a war to wake the country up.”

“Now we have Mac, who’s programmed to attack our nation’s government.”

“Listen, Dimble, a lot of creative patriots are at work.”

“Rank, it is nothing but a clutch of traitorous code, what do they call it? Ah, Ah, algorithms.”

“Don’t you believe it!”

“I do. Feather Jackdaw is writing his code too, and she is getting help from PU’s computer science department.”

“I’ve heard people say that before.”

“It is a well-known fact.”

“Where did you hear that, Dimble?”

“I am a reporter, remember!”

“Yeah, I am asking about your source.”

“Rank, my sources are confidential.”

“Your sources are wrong!”

Dimble tries to stand but sits down again, mumbling to himself.

“What’s that, Dimble?”

“It’s all part of the thunderstorm, Rank.”

“There is no storm in the forecasts I have seen.”

“No, Rank, it’s a hail of lies and a downpour of deceptions.”

“Dimble, you need to get with the program.”

“Thankfully no one is coding my utterances.”

“That is not what I meant!”

“Rank, you are drowning.”

“No, I am not. I am standing on dry land, like Fred.”

Dimble gestures with his flask in hand. The top falls off, rolling into the weeds.

“That damn thing!  Rank, you’re lost in the stream of falsehoods flooding into the vox populi.”

Rank steps over and picks up the top of Dimble’s flask from a patch of chickweed and dead oak leaves.

“Here, Dimble, keep this screwed on tight, okay?”

“Thank you, Rank. We are all getting screwed at the moment you know.”

Dimble gets up, walks around, and leans on the back of the bench facing Rank.

“Think, ‘Contracts’!”

“Okay, contracts, what about them, Dimble?”

“Feather Jackdaw has huge contracts with Defense and Intelligence.”

“Right, all those satellite launches, for example.”

“Rank, that’s the tip of the ‘dollar-berg’.”

“What do you mean ‘dollar-berg’?”

“I mean a lot of money we, the public, don’t see.”

“Yeah, that whole mess needs a big shake-up!”

“I couldn’t agree more Rank.  Here, have another dose of my sanity juice.”

Dimble leans over the bench to hand Rank the flask.

“Thanks, buddy.”

Rank takes a swig and hands it back.

“Fred, here, there’s some left.”

“No, Dimble, thanks all the same.”

“Well, your sanity quotient is pretty respectable according to my SQ test.”

“When did you administer that?”

Dimble belches and steadies himself on the back of the bench.

“Fred, it is one of the more profound benefits of alcoholic consumption.”

“Dimble, I haven’t had a drink yet, today.”

“No, more’s the pity, but I have and enjoy some insulation from my biases on this important matter.”

Rank walks around to help Dimble keep his balance.

“What’s your IQ, Dimble.”

“So low they wouldn’t tell me the number.”

“Okay, so bear in mind, Feather Jackdaw and her team have very high scores, off the charts.”

“Oh, I know, they are good at those tests, yes.”

“So, you might want to consider their superior intelligence.  Our country is in good hands!”

“There are many kinds of intelligence that test fails to detect.”

“Well, that is just speculation.”

“That test also fails to detect, arrogance, insensitivity, and hatred, stupidity and meanness.  I could go on.”

“Yeah okay, Dimble.”

“Look here, I am running out of juice.”

Dimble shuffles away from the bench toward the road.

“Wait up, Dimble!”

“What’s that, Rank?”

“People have good reason for their anger.”

Dimble mumbles something drowned out by another passing helicopter.

Rank takes his arm and steadies him.

“I’ll walk you home, buddy.”

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right. 

Maynard Keyes and Daisy Brisco, wrapped in her Ukrainian flag scarf, join me at the shopping center. We shelter under the overhang, outside the new store, Legal Drugs.

Rain follows last week’s blizzard in a drenching beat on one side of Maynard’s large umbrella that reaches beyond our shelter. 

“My contract with PU art department may not be renewed for the spring semester.”

“Why, Daisy?”

“It is funded by a grant from the NEA!”

“Yes, a threatening part of the deep state, of course!”

“MAYNARD!”

“Sorry, what other opportunities do you see?”

“Not much. I guess I might be able to work at Tenniel’s Art Shop again.”

“Have you got an agent?”

“No, no representation at all.”

“Might help you sell some art.”

“That is the way to do it, of course, but I never have. I never really wanted a job.”

“Why not?  Seeking opportunities and making money can be great fun!”

“I am looking for different kinds of opportunities.”

“What kinds?”

“In my artwork, for example, Maynard.”

“Oh, personal growth, you might say.”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“One of those ancient Greeks had an idea about chariots.”

“Oh! a strategist, was he?”

“He was using an analogy, Fred.”

“For what, Maynard?”

“It is all about virtue.”

“Could that be the pursuit of happiness?”

“Precisely, Fred, but not the modern meaning of happiness.”

“What is the modern meaning, Maynard?  You mean it has changed?”

“It has, Daisy.  Happiness might mean going to a ballgame or dinner with your lover.”

“It might not if the lovers are fighting.”

“For the sake of argument let’s assume they are not.”

“Okay, Maynard, so what did this Greek think about happiness?”

“Daisy, think of June 1776, Jefferson’s famous opening to the Declaration of Independence.”

“Daisy, you might say we have the consumer’s idea of happiness.”

“Sure, Fred that’s my feeling about it!”

“That’s it.  Jefferson wrote before our consumer society evolved.”

A deep green Ford Transit van from Phaedrus Conceptual Solutions Inc. pulls up to the dry cleaners next door. Their rearing palomino horse leaps forth from a circular yellow background of the logo on each door.

“Excuse me! Look at that van!”

Daisy reads the slogan printed under the logo.

“’Kick back! Let us do the thinking for you with Phaedrus AI’”

Maynard is laughing.

“Speaking of our consumer society!”

“Yes, Kick back and be relieved of your responsibility!”

“Can you imagine that, Fred?”

“Daisy, they are giving America another convenience.”

“Oh! That is a nice rendering of the horse even if it is a logo.”

“There you are Daisy, you could go into commercial art!”

“No thanks Fred, I am not into evoking mindless slogans.”

“Certainly not, that would be no help in understanding virtue.”

“Interesting; from a chariot, an engine of war, we get virtue.”

A woman in a deep green uniform step out of the van with her phone to her ear.

“Here’s the thing, Fred, he uses the charioteer and two horses to picture your soul.”

“Like a snapshot from two thousand years before the camera!”

“It is a mental picture, Fred.”

“Okay, an image, you might say!”

“The charioteer is reason, which directs the horses. One has a good equine nature and the other a bad nature.”

“I get it, our good and bad impulses!”

“Right, Daisy, so the idea is that reason should guide people towards wisdom and virtue.”

“Okay, what about intuition, you know, the heart?”

“He didn’t use that metaphor.”

“It all sounds kind of abstract, I mean in reality we all have emotional reactions.”

“We do, Daisy, those might be of the good horse or the bad.”

The woman from Phaedrus Conceptual Solutions comes out of the cleaners with a bundle of uniforms, draped in plastic, over her arm.

“So, it’s horses all the way along!”

“Galloping through life, Fred.”

“Not really, in some respects life is more like a rat race!”

We are interrupted by a thunderclap. A man in shirtsleeves is running to his car from the hardware store, further down.

“That guy is getting drenched!”

“You want to run for it, Daisy?”

“No thanks, Fred. Look, there’s clear sky coming. Mind your umbrella, Maynard. Don’t get struck by lightning.”

Maynard moves back against the window at Legal Drugs and folds his umbrella.

“I feel like we are getting off the point.”

“Which one, there are so many, Maynard?”

“The whole work leisure-thing, Fred.”

“What do you mean by ‘thing’?”

“Alienation! Fred.”

“Maynard, let’s start over. There is work people like or even love doing and there’s work people do because they need money and may hate the job.”

“They just need to find a better job.”

“True enough, Maynard, but easier said than done.”

“I didn’t mean it was easy!”

“Okay, okay, look, what I am trying to say is that most people need a break from their work.”

“Yeah, like time off. Free time to cultivate your garden or get a haircut or take care of a sick child.”

“That isn’t exactly free time, Daisy. The thing is what do you want that time for?”

“You mean free of obligations? Lots of us don’t know what to do with it.”

“So true, Fred and some of us can’t get enough of that kind of time.”

Maynard leans on his umbrella.

“I think this is a Marxian insight.  Alienated labor divides you from yourself.”

“Yes, Maynard, you really don’t want to be working but you do anyway so that part of you that ‘wants’ is denied.”

Daisy’s scarf has tumbled from her shoulders. She wraps it around her neck. “When we are divided, we can’t get it together.”

The Phaedrus van starts its intrusive beeping, backing out into the parking lot. 

“So it is, Daisy, and has been, since the industrial revolution.”

“Let that thing get going.”

The van is stuck behind an F-150 and a Tesla, both heading for the newly vacated space.

“As machines did more work, many of us had to work more like them, in tedious repetitive tasks.”

The Tesla moves on, opening the way for the van to leave and the truck to park.

Maynard’s ring tones sound into the silence of the departed engines.

“Well, now we have to keep up with instant digital communications!”

Maynard taps out a quick text and pockets his phone.

“I wish they would just shut that noise down for a while.”

“You mean all of it, the whole internet?”

“No, Fred, just social media.”

“Not a bad idea.”

“Do you ever read the comments on websites?”

“Yup, it is often a lot of Noise, I mean just obnoxious and of no value.”

“But Daisy, people are busy reacting and venting their compressed frustrations, etc.”

“That is what I call noise, Fred.  It doesn’t tell me anything.”

“It tells you how they feel.”

“Yeah, like a swishing cat’s tail tells me it is feeling defensive.”

“It is not virtuous, that much is clear.”

Maynard looks up from tapping out another message. “When virtue guides the horses, we have self-mastery.”

“That is something artists need, to some extent at least.”

“Really Daisy? So many artists seem to have been a bit deranged.”

“Yeah, I know, Van Gogh, for instance, but when he was painting, he had his chariot on track and his horses balanced virtuously.”

Maynard points to the sky with his big, folded umbrella.

“Look! The sky is clearing.”

The rain slacks off and sunlight brightens puddles among cracks in the asphalt.

“I need to make a move.  See you soon!”

Maynard walks over to his huge pink Buick and Daisy and I cross Maxwell Avenue to Fauxmont and our homes.

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right. 

“bel clears snow off their new car while Steve shovels it off the driveway, making room to put their trashcans out beyond the driveway’s gate. 

“Fred, how is the footing out on the road?”

“You have to watch it, slippery here and there.”

“Albrecht’s plow raised that frozen range of the ‘Andes’ between the gate and the street!”

“Yes, he cleared one lane of the street but blocked the driveway and filled in the ditch too.”

Steve has shoveled a path to the “Andes” and the gate swings on its hinges again. They set aside their tools.

“I doubt there will be any trash collection tomorrow.”

“Where is Ossian?”

“He is inside. I’ll let him out, now there is a path for him.”

Steve walks back to their front door and opens it.

Ossian bursts out barking and rushes down the cleared driveway towards bel.

“Hi there! “

Ossian quiets and puts his forepaws up on bel’s knees.

“I think this is too deep for you!”

A golden retriever comes up from Maxwell Avenue, ahead of Lark Bunlush. Ossian ploughs through the snow on his side of the fence, barking.

“What was that about too deep, bel?”

“Yeah! He has got a thing for goldens.”

The two dogs sniff through the fence.

“Lark, where did you get that beautiful dog?”

“He’s a guest dog, supposed to go back to DC today.”

“Looks like he’s snowed in, at your place.”

“He’s snowed in, bel, and can’t wait to get out!”

Steve comes out of the gate, and starts trying to clear the Andes and access to the road, but they are solid ice. 

The Golden is pulling hard on his leash towards us with Ossian keeping up on his side of the fence.

Lark stumbles, dropping the leash and the dog bounds over to Steve, paws slipping several times where the sun melt refroze on the road last night. 

“Lark, are you alright?”

She gets up and brushes the dry snow off her black wind pants.

“I’m fine.  Can you catch that dog?”

The golden has stopped by the gate to sample the shovelings. Ossian zips through the gate.  Steve drops his shovel and grabs the trailing leash pulling back inside the gate against the Golden’s sudden momentum.

“bel scales the Andes following Ossian onto the cleared road.  

“OSSI! Come back here!”

Ossian has run out the gate but follows the golden back in again.

Bel holds Ossi’s red leash as it gets wound around the goldens longer black one.

Lark reaches Steve by the partially open gate in front of the car. 

“What’s the dog’s name?”

“Sherlock, Steve”

“In the spirit of Conan Doyle!”

“He is a detector alright. Yesterday, Sherlock found my lost glove under the snow about a block from here.”

“Looks like a female, Lark.”

“Yeah, should be, Shirley, I guess.”

“Are you ready for this?” Steve hands her the leash.

“Thanks, Steve.  Are you ready for the new dictator?”

“Do you mean Feather Jackdaw or Macadamia?”

“It was a dual inauguration. They are digitally codependent.”

Bel has picked up Ossian to prevent further entanglement.

“Steve, close the gate!”

He pulls the gate closed, leaving his shovel stuck into the Andes.

Ossian is struggling again to get free of bel’s arms and get over to Sherlock.

“I am taking him in to get his jacket.”

“bel starts toward the house, but Ossi breaks free, landing in the snow piled up from the driveway.”

“The United States of American Money, that’s where we live now.”

“I get it, Lark. Macadamia is installing a cabinet of billionaires.”

“Yeah, Fred, that is a basic part of the operating system.”

Steve takes off his gloves, holds them under his arm, and blows into his cupped hands. Then looks up. “One of his algorithms!”

“Remember, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was also a for-profit company.”

“How could I forget those Pilgrims, Lark?”

“Yeah, but the myth leaves out that part.  It’s all freedom, Indians, corn, and fish.”

“That’s what myths are for! Feel good!”

“Okay, Steve, let’s get real and recall our revolution was about wealthy white landowners keeping more of their money.”

“Well, sure, our founding documents are aspirational.”

“They didn’t think the rest of the population worthy of their attention!” 

“That was customary, back then.”

“That doesn’t make it right!”

“No, it’s just a historical fact.”

We can hear the blade of Albrecht’s plow scraping then bouncing over a speed bump and landing with a metallic clang. 

His Hummer, with the blade still attached, pulls up. He rolls down his window.

“Hi, there party goers!”

Steve waves, “Thanks for the plowing job!”

“Sure, Steve, all for our beautiful new America!”

“What’s new about your plowing?  Haven’t you been doing that for us for the last four years or more?”

“Sure have Lark. Nice looking dog you got there.”

“This is Sherlock.”

“Wow! Is he yours?”

The Hummer stalls.

“This thing needs a tune-up.  I am going to trade it in on one of those Tesla trucks as soon as the weather clears.” 

Albrecht restarts the Hummer, which misfires and belches a cloud of exhaust.

“You know, Lark, our country has always been about work, money, and prosperity.”

“Right, for some.  Others can work hard all their lives and barely make a living.”

“Of course!  This world has always been full of losers.”

“Not losers, not in that sense, most people were kept down by class and race-based slavery.”

“That’s over now.  The race now will be a competition to get rich in our newly liberated economy.”

Steve looks over at bel. “Maybe”. 

Albrecht revs his engine.

“I’ve got to get this thing moving!”

Two SUVs are waiting to get past the plow on the narrow strip of road he has cleared.

Bel has caught up with Ossi and given up on getting his coat.

Lark gives Sherlock and Ossie treats. 

“Have you heard of Pete Pigsbreth, bel?”

“No, Lark, who?”

“Pigsbreth, he is National Director of Local Coordination or NDLC.”

“What does NDLC do?”

“bel, it spies on every community to make sure we fall for Macadamia’s nonsense.”

“Well, that’s getting done online!”

“No, this is personal.  They want to make it personal.”

“I don’t get it.”

“It’s PR, every community has its Albrecht Intaglio, who works for NDLC.”

“Well, Lark, as far as I can see, politics is mainly online now.”

“Sure, bel, there is no substance, just slogans and distractions.”

“I think Macadamia’s algorithms are plugged into every hate group in the country.”

“Right again bel, the program feeds them what they want to hear.”

Steve is still trying to warm his hands but lowers them from his mouth to speak.

“The education system let us down there.”

“How?”

“Lark, we aren’t teaching the whole person.”

“What do you mean?”

“I just mean students should learn to think for themselves.”

“Are you kidding?  When do you think that’s going to happen?”

“No, well, I know I am being unrealistic.”

bel drops another treat for Ossi. 

“Remember we have grown up watching TV commercials.”

“The persuasion industry does not provoke reflection, bel.”

“Yes, it is going for reaction.”

“Right, TikTok vids are short and punchy like ads.” 

“Yup, a small transition from selling the latest new soap.”

Sherlock pulls hard and Lark steadies herself on a fence post. “Yeah, the only new thing was the label!”

“Now we all get political labels.”

Steve rubs his hands together.

“Right, distractions, political treats, you might say!”

“When Boyd was a high school junior, I had to explain to him how the House and Senate differ.”

Steve puts his gloves back on.

“Yeah, civics seems to have dropped out.”

“Well, Boyd was always kind of preoccupied in his teens.”

bel distracts Ossi with another treat.

“I can tell you schools differ enormously” 

Steve is edging toward his shovel.

“A good school district is nearly always high income.”

“Doesn’t that tell you something!”

bel keeps Ossi close despite his protests.

Lark can’t hold Sherlock back any longer.

“Looks like we’re moving on!”

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right. 

Fred meets Diddlie on her driveway. She wears an unusual pale gray pinafore, gray cap, and white sleeves and tights. 

“What is that outfit you are wearing?”

“It’s my admission uniform to that new Gallery.”

“A uniform?”

“Yes, you have to wear light gray, warm or cool tone, to get in.”

“Makes you look like a schoolgirl.”

“You like that, Fred?”

“Well, sure, I mean I don’t get it.”

“Don’t be shy, Fred. I didn’t pick a warm tone for nothing.”

“What’s it for?”

Diddlie presses against me.

“It is just part of the experience.”

“Where did you get the outfit?”

She moves a few inches away, rubbing herself against me.

“Off the website, fifty bucks.  It’s cheap stuff, see?”

She holds out her sleeve for me to touch the fabric.

“I see, feels like paper.”

“Yeah, hope it doesn’t rip and expose my sagging wrinkled bod.”

“You won’t be alone in that!”

“Fred, that doesn’t help.”

“I don’t have a gray outfit, besides some sweatpants and a shirt.”

“That’s okay, you can buy when we get there.”

“Okay, what kind of exhibition are we going to?  I thought it was going to be art.”

“Oh, I can’t remember the guy’s name, but he does do art.”

“Steve told me yesterday that it’s called, ‘Art You’re In’.”

“He and bel should be here pretty soon.”

“Good grief, is that them?”

“Yeah, that’s their new Toyota Hybrid.”

The white Camry rolls silently onto Diddlie’s driveway until the front radials snap a twig. Bel opens her window.

“Hi there, art lovers!”

I can see Steve in a gray tunic and pale gray cap, while bel’s outfit is much like Diddlie’s but she has light yellow sleeves.

“Bel, what is this thing we are going to?”

“Fred, it is Boris Tarantula’s latest extravaganza.”

Bel winds up her window as Diddlie and I get in the back.

“It’s an installation at that estate owned by Axel Ensor, outside Gaithersburg.”

Steve backs the car out of the driveway.

“All five thousand acres of it.”

“Did he sponsor the thing?”

“Sure did, Fred.”

“I’ll bet Boris got a nice rake-off!”

“He is getting a hundred thousand a month, plus expenses!”

“Not bad.”

“That’s what Frank Vasari said when he told me about it.”

“Oh really, what else did you learn?”

“Frank is going to make a few bucks exhibiting the outfits and stuff at PU Art Space, when this thing is over.”

Diddlie nudges me. “Who is Frank Vasari?”

“He is chairman of PU Art Department.”

“Is he that guy Daisy hangs out with?”

We pull up at a red light and Steve turns around to Diddlie.

“He hired her to teach undergraduate drawing classes at PU.  I don’t think they are dating.”

“Well, I hope she finds a guy soon.”

“She is isn’t looking, Did. I can assure you.”

After nearly an hour, Steve turns into the parking lot from which we can see a massive white curvy structure built into a hillside. 

Bel turns to us before we get out of the car.

“They sell tickets at the entrance, and you can get the uniform in a packet marked ‘Liquid Light’.”

The line moves fast as a voice keeps repeating:

“Changing rooms are on the right, folks.”

The others are waiting when I come out in my gray paper outfit carrying my clothes in the plastic bag provided for the paper clothing.

“Fred, you could have left your cloths in the lockers, you know.”

“What lockers, bel?”

“Over in the changing rooms.”

“Oh, I am not going back now.”

We enter the building through a turnstile, which flashes lots of tiny lights at us. Then in the lobby of the exhibition, we see replicas of ourselves waving from a balcony above. A wall of screens explains different parts of the show.  

Boris Tarantula fills the whole wall of screens with a giant presence, before we can watch the videos,  

“As you proceed, microphones throughout the exhibition space will pick up voices from passersby and whatever you are talking about will materialize before your eyes.  If you say, lion, a lion will appear before you.  If you say, Grandma’s place, her room will surround you. Welcome to the miracles of our time, making you the art in this show.”

Boris fades away, and the screens divide into rectangles, each explaining various features of the exhibition.

We move on, into an old-fashioned parlor with an upright piano and two warn armchairs with antimacassars in front of a small fireplace. There are plenty of others in the space with us. It’s hard to tell if they are tangible or just light. We can barely hear their voices.

“So, who said anything about grandma?”

“I didn’t, Diddlie.”

“The mics must have picked up someone else.”

“Well, I guess so, Steve.”

Okay, so what’s with those screeching monkeys?”

“You hear those birds sounding off?”

“They sound like parrots, bel.”

“My God, something is coming up from somewhere!”

The rhymical repetitions of an animal trotting through dry leaves, sound alarmingly close as they grow louder.  Many other sounds of the jungle come through as we listen.

“What is going on here?”

“I was going to ask you that, Diddlie.”

Viscus green liquid light drips down our paper clothes from low-hanging branches, and from shrubs as we brush by them.

“I can’t get this magenta snakeskin off me!” 

“It isn’t really a snake, Did!”

She shakes some of it off and it falls to the floor spreading like a rug.

“Will you look at that!”

A lion sits only yards away.

“Are we in the same room with that thing?”

“See, it is looking across a field.”

“I can’t tell what space anything is in!”

Steve walks over, sloshing some yellow and green light across the floor as if it were slush after a thaw, giving off a little magenta vapor.

“Are you enjoying the party?”

“What party?  We have been in a jungle room.”

“How about you, Did?”

“Nothing makes sense around here!”

We hear multiple conversations as if we were in a crowded room.

“Wait a minute, where is all that coming from?  Where’s the lion? Where is the little room?”

“Follow me.”

Steve leads the way into a purple snowstorm.

Diddlie tries to gather some up.

It turns yellow when it gets on her paper uniform.

“You can’t even make a snowball with this stuff!”

“That’s because there is nothing there but light.”

“There is something more than that, Fred.”

Nude dancers surround us moving to Tchaikovsky’s dance of Sugar Plumb Fairy, from the Nutcracker Suite.

“Those figures are right out of Rubens’ Three Graces!” 

“Who are they, Steve?”

“The Graces were the daughters of Zeus and Eurynome, the Ocean nymph.”

“Steve, you mean they are paintings from Greek mythology?”

“I mean they are animations of Rubens’ work.”

“What? like Micky Mouse, or something?”

“Right, Diddlie, only it’s not hand-painted cels, it’s digital stuff.”

“Well, that one has a mighty big ass!”

“Oh! Look! There’s Micky riding a sled downhill over there.”

bel taps my shoulder.

“This is cyber, ‘Son et Lumiere’!”

“Sound and light and then some!”

“Did you see the screen explaining that everything we see is a digital simulation?”

“No, I didn’t have time to read much.”

“Does this experience remind you of something, Fred?”

“Yes, come to think of it, the president-elect!”

“Creepy, isn’t it?”

“This must be the same technology that keeps people believing Macadamia is a real person.”

“Sure is, Fred.  Boris gave his campaign twenty million, you know.”

“I had no idea Boris had that kind of money, Steve.”

He takes Diddlie’s arm and leads her into another exhibition space.

On following them, the first thing bel and I see is the Milky Way brighter and bigger than most people have ever seen it.  

“We seem to be walking among the stars.”

“I know bel, where is the floor?”

“I don’t see it.”

“We are definitely treading on something, though.”

Diddlie is gesticulating and liquid light flies off her arms in yellows and oranges.

“Let’s get out of here!”

Steve grabs her left hand.

“Diddlie, just let it all go by.”

Bel grabs Steve’s arm.

“Do you realize they now have replicas of us all?”

“Are we going to be replaced?”

“No Diddlie, they aren’t true replicas, they are just light.”

“Well, Steve, who needs a simulated mushroom experience? I can have real the thing at home.”

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right. 

It is a warm sunny morning. Rank Majors is busy on two phones at once.  He and Albrecht are sitting outside the Pie Shop with their laptops open on the table. They wave to Macadamia supporters, parking opposite, and sounding their horns in the Safeway lot.  

“Yo! Fred, it’s a beautiful day in November!”

“Tea-shirt weather!”

Albrecht gets up, and shows off his red Macadamia tea shirt, with “Mac is Back” in white across his shoulder blades.

“What do you want Fred? I am buying.”

“Thanks, Albrecht, I’ll have Earl Grey tea and a blueberry muffin.”

He walks in to pick up my order.

Rank puts down his phones.

“Pull up a seat, Fred, how are you doing?”

He glances at his computer screen and taps the trackpad.

“To tell you the truth Rank, I was disappointed in the election results last night.”

“President Armond Macadamia and his VP, Feather Jackdaw, will give us American style Putinist government, and we will be the greatest, wealthiest power in history.”

“Really? Feather is a tech billionaire, what is she doing in the picture?

“She is the richest woman in the world and prosperity is what we are all about.”

“There is a serious conflict of interest there.”

“No way, her job is to bring efficiency to the government, and she has the experience to do it.”

“No government experience, though.”

“All the better!”

“Haven’t we already been there?”

“We have never had the tech resources we have now.”

“After World War II we had it over the rest of the world.”

“Right, because war devastated Europe and Japan.  Now we will be on top of a much bigger global pile!”

“That kind of domination is just what I am afraid of!”

“Listen, Putin is the most astute political genius of our time!”

“You mean there are others?”

“Remember Lenin’s commanding heights?”

“Unfortunately, I do.”

“Macadamia, Lenin, Putin, Orban, for example, all understood where the power lay and grabbed it.”

“Yeah, where do you think these heights are now?”

“Media!”

“You mean the internet?”

“That, and TV”

“Makes sense to me.”

Albrecht comes over with my tea and muffin and sits down next to me. 

“Albrecht, explain this media thing.”

“You see, the media allowed Macadamia to talk to real Americans.  The guys put out of work by the radical left and the deep state.”

“Talk to them?”

“Right, in their vocabulary. The over-educated Liberals, find it soooo offensive.  They don’t know anything.  Mac’s campaign was sheer genius!”

“What about the tax cuts?”

“Yes, that’s what American business needs to bring back prosperity.”

“You know, Calvin Coolidge once broke his silence, to say, ‘The business of America is business’.”

“That’s why we have an airport named after him.”

“How is all this prosperity going to get down to ‘real’ Americans”?

“More money means more well-paid jobs!”

“Albrecht, I’ll believe that when it happens.”

“Coming soon, my friend!”

“What good do you see coming up?”

“Think of all the data the credit card companies, and others, have!”

“Not a happy thought, Albrecht, I believe they have digital profiles on all users.”

“Right! Once we have reorganized the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau it can use all that to control threats to our program.”

“What do you mean, threats?”

“Okay, say there is some radical leftist Congressman who gets a little too noisy?”

“Yes, criticizing the administration.”

“Yeah, we can go in and disrupt her credit and if she doesn’t come around, we can tie her up in court until she is bankrupt.”

“You think that’s good?”

“Sure, keep the radical left out of the game!”

“I see, control of money is power!”

“The senior commanding height under capitalism!”

“It sure is, but this would be against countless laws!”

“No problem, Fred.  Mac has over a hundred executive orders ready

to go on his first day.”

“You mean taking illegal actions?”

“He is immune from prosecution, don’t you remember?”

“Well, yes but this is going too far.”

“There is no such thing as too far when it comes to breaking up the deep state.”

“That sounds like dangerous talk to me, Albrecht.”

“Fred, don’t you worry.  Sure, we are going to fire about a million government bureaucrats, but the best of them will get new higher-paying jobs in the new companies we will create.”

“What companies?”

“Companies running the Executive branch.”

“You can’t contract out a government agency!”

“Why not?”

“Agencies hire contractors, they don’t serve them.”

“Our companies will serve the President.”

“What about the Constitution?”

“That too, once it has been updated to the twenty-first century!”

“Albrecht, it takes a constitutional convention to do that.”

“Okay Fred, we shall have one and we shall have a majority.”

“I think you are getting carried away, Albrecht.”

“Probably! This is the most exciting day of my life and the greatest day in American history!”

Rank and Albrecht do a high five and one of Rank’s phones falls on the ground.

“What about all those government workers you are going to fire?”

“Same as coal miners or auto workers when their business shuts down.”

“Yes, the ‘real Americans’”?

“Right, those who go along with the program, will be fine.”

“What about the others?”

“Who cares?  They are what we call an ‘externality’.”

“Oh! A kind of pollution?”

“You got it, Fred.  Just part of the cost of doing business.”

Rank is back on a phone with cracked glass. Lark Bunlush pulls up in a red Fiat 500. She parks facing us, in the Safeway lot, under a nearby streetlight.  

“Fred, what are you doing out here with those two?”

“Hi, Lark.”

Albrecht gets up as she walks over to our table.

“Cute little car, Lark.”

“Yeah, used, but it runs well, so far.”

“Great, and it’s red!”

“Yes, it is red, so what?”

“So, red won the election!”

“Oh! Albrecht, you misunderstand.  Red is the color of revolution!”

“We are the revolutionaries now!”

Rank has put his phone down again, and waves to Lark.

“Come join the party!”

“You know what, Rank?”

“What, Lark?”

“Herbert Marcuse predicted that the revolution wouldn’t come until the system failed to deliver the goods, and it would come from the right!”

Albrecht high fives Rank, again.

“Yeah! And we are right, right now!”

“You want a coffee, Lark, I am buying?”

Lark looks up at a passing crow, which lands on top of the streetlight.

“Thanks, Albrecht, but I have shopping to do.”

“Looks like Herbie, whoever he was, he gets it!”

The crow lets out a series of coos, caws, and rattles.

Albrecht looks up at the crow who seems to be looking back down at us.

“Stick with us, up there, buddy!”

Lark pulls up a seat.

“Marcuse was a part of the Frankfurt School of Sociology, who developed a school of sociology called, Critical Theory. He was also a refugee from Hitler.”

Albrecht gets up.

“He is news to me!  You sure you don’t want anything?”

Lark shakes her head.

“What are you doing out here, anyway?  Why aren’t you down the block at the Macadamia Campaign’s local headquarters?”

“Lark, they are partying, and we have work to do!”

“Haven’t you done enough already?”

“Not even close, Lark, we are coordinating the Macadamia organization’s local activities.”

“Macadamia isn’t even a real person!”

Rank looks up from his laptop.

“He sure is, Lark, I have shaken his hand.”

“So say a lot of people, but I am telling you there was a tech breakthrough at PU a while ago and that guy is a digital replica.”

“What do you know about breakthroughs at PU?”

“Only that they have happened.”

“Be careful who you talk to about that, Lark.”

“What are you saying, Rank? Is that a threat?”

“Far from it. I have heard the same story, and I have been given that same advice.”

“Seems to me we all need to talk a whole lot more about it.”

“You liberals are just determined to cause a ruckus!”

“No, not a ruckus, just some truth.”

Albrecht comes back with coffee.  He takes a sip from one and puts the other in front of Lark.“Truth?  Lark, we make our own truth.”

“I know, Albrecht, but those are not facts they are fibs and lies.”

“Hey, they bring in the votes.  How’s that for truth?”

“Okay, okay, Albrecht, we have been down this road too many times already.  Aren’t you just a little bit worried about who controls our new digital president-elect?”

“No, I am looking forward to a new celebrity cabinet.”

“No kidding, like Hollywood types?”

“Maybe, and our supporters from all over our TV news business.”

“What do they know about running the government?”

“All they need to know is what the big guy tells them.”

More crows arrive, circling noisily.

We all look up at them and Lark points out our crow has taken off.

“That is what’s called a ‘murder’ of crows.”

“Do you think those birds are bent on mayhem?”

“No Fred, Maynard told me that is their collective name.”

“A murder?” 

“That’s what he said.” 

The crows settle across the street in the brilliant yellow of a hickory in Fall, leaving a couple of white droppings on the hood of Lark’s red car.

“Stay tuned Lark, you are watching history in the making.”

Lark shakes her head and gets up.

“Albrecht, I think history is repeating itself, if anything.”

Leaving the coffee Albrecht put in front of her, Lark walks over to the Safeway.

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right. 

We are in Steve’s car driving along Maxwell Ave, to visit his friend, Beatle. Traffic is slow.

“Time passes much quicker in the morning than any other.”

“That’s probably because you take Ossi out first thing.”

“I put out the breakfast dishes first then take him out between seven and eight.”

“It’s barely light at that time.”

“Yes, terriers are crepuscular, you know.”

“That’s a good hour’s runaround!”

“It is. While we are out, bel prepares our fruit and oatmeal, tea for me, and coffee for her. I put down Ossi’s chow when I get back.”

“Doesn’t bel feed him at all?”

“She doesn’t do that much in the mornings since we lost Josephine.”

“bel was deeply attached to that cat.”

“So true, Fred.  She feeds Ossi in the evenings, with a little pumpkin for dessert.”

“Enjoys his veg does he?”

“It keeps him regular, and he never leaves an atom in the dish.”

“Dogs have highly efficient tongues.”

“I am more active in the mornings. Emptying the dehumidifiers, taking trash out, and so on, and that is where some of the time goes.  But time races by while we read the papers.”

“I imagine you read the New York Times, which is way too long for me.”

“Yup, and the Washington Post and Financial Times.”

“That lot could take all day and all night!”

“bel reads the FT, and I like the Times and we both read different parts of the Post.”

We stop beside a white Tesla in the left turn lane. A golden retriever looks back at us from the open passenger’s side window.

“That dog looks like it wants to chat.”

Steve opens his window, and the dog pulls back and looks away.

“Only with other dogs!”

We move forward a few car lengths.

“It is nothing but red lights along here!”

“They are always red if you are in a hurry!”

“Yes, are we running late?”

“Beatle doesn’t take much notice of the time.”

“You can’t be too careful.  People are running lights more and more often.”

“I had someone go around me to run this light up here.”

Traffic is backing up in the oncoming lane behind a bus letting off passengers.

“That guy looks like he is going to make a run for it!”

“Stay there, buddy!”

We move a few more car lengths and stop at the next red light.

“It would be fun to hear some of the Beatle’s old hits.”

“No, it is not the band, he was always tinkering with his VW.”

“You don’t see many of those old Bugs now.”

“He has a really old one with the split rear window.”

“From the fifties?”

“He would know.”

“You’ve made no mention of a wife or partner. Is he married?”

“Yes, three times and none of them could stand him for long.”

“So, he is by himself now.”

“Yeah, pretty much.  His second wife, Natalya comes by, once in a while.”

“What about number three?”

“No way, that third marriage ended in violence after less than a year!”

“How ghastly, did he hurt her badly?”

“No, she gave him a concussion and cracked a couple of ribs with a sock full of ball bearings.”

“Interesting weapon!”

“Beatle keeps it under his pillow in case of an intruder.”

The white VW Atlas ahead turns right through a yellow light.

“An turn signal would have been nice!”

“Probably on the phone.”

“Okay, we take the next one.”

The light has turned red at the intersection of Maxwell Ave. and a broken street sign indicating an important part of Beatle’s address unreadable.

“So, what is your history with this ‘Beatle’?”

“We are in a Listening Group.”

“What is that?”

“Comparing and contrasting different recordings.”

“Oh, are you all musicians?”

“There are only three of us, now.  The other two are musicians, I am not, as you know.”

Steve parks in front of a small square bungalow with white shutters at the windows.  Next door are to two long narrow townhouses in the last stages of construction.  

“Look at those two identical twins, Steve!”

“They call it, ‘infill’. It provides more housing.”

“Yes, and each house will add at least two more vehicles to the streets.”

“Not just vehicles, huge late-model SUVs.”

We get out of the car and look around.

“There are always a few midsized electric cars like that Prius over there.”

“Steve, this area is nearly gridlocked already!”

“That’s growth for you!”

“Look at those new places down there. The neighborhood is getting horribly gentrified.”

“That’s prosperity for you!”

“Why do they have to ruin our nice old community with all this?”

“Don’t be a NIMBY, Fred.”

We can see a red, white, and blue Macadamia sign on the grass behind the rail fence across Beatle’s front yard.”

“Look at that, Fred!”

“It is one of those LED signs.”

“I didn’t know they made garden variety electronic signs.”

“Isn’t that a small version of that program of images at the Hadron Shopping Center?”

“Sure, looks like it.”

“There’s Macadamia dancing to The Village People’s YMCA!”

“I wonder if he knows that was a gay group?”

Several broken rails have fallen at odd angles to their posts. One end is attached crudely to a gate post with baling wire.  A large white oak branch has fallen near Beatle’s black VW, parked in the driveway.  Twigs full of dead leaves are scattered over the car. We walk up the short leaf-strewn front path to the portico.

“He has been in this house more than thirty years.”

“It looks like he needs to get a paint job.”

White paint peels off the door frame.

Steve turns the doorknob, and we go into the small living room filled with a baby grand piano. An easy chair in the corner is piled with sheet music.

“Beatle!”

Steve looks around.  There is no sign of him.

“This room feels kind of bare.  No carpet, nothing on the walls, no curtains.”

“I know, Fred.  He is all ears in here.”

“Beatle, it’s Steve. I have brought my neighbor, Fred.”

“Down here. Come on down here!”

It is a faint sound.

“Oh, he is in the listening room.”

Steve leads the way through the kitchen with one old percolator coffee pot on each side of the sink, which is full of unwashed mugs.

“Help yourself to coffee from the pot on the right.”

“Thanks, Beatle, we are all coffeed out.”

“The milk in the fridge is sour.”

We go down to the basement by steep stairs made narrow by the stair lift.  The path to Beatle’s chair is warn deep into the light brown shag carpet. 

“Beatle! How are you?”

He is a short barrel-shaped man with a graying ginger beard and thin hair. He doesn’t look up, adjusting the controls on his stereo preamp.  He waves his headphones held in his right hand.

“Hi Steve, Hi Steve’s friend.’

“This is Fred.”

“Fred, pull up a seat anywhere you can find one.”

The far wall supports shelves loaded with LPs from floor to ceiling.  There’s a row of old steel ammunition boxes on the floor in front. The wall behind him holds books, with more piled up on the floor in front of it.  Looks like a small window has been blocked with a warped unpainted plywood rectangle, fastened with peeling gray duct tape. 

Beatle backs up and sits slowly in his corduroy recliner. His headphones now hang off one wrist stretched out over the arm of his chair.

We step carefully around Beatle’s feet on the extended recliner to take identical brown leather barrel chairs, facing him. They are badly torn along the sides.  The cushions are timeworn with faded hollows in the seat.

He notices me looking at the ragged chairs.

“My first wife’s cat tore that up. I told her the cat’s got to go.  So, the bitch left with her cat the next day!”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Don’t waste your sorrow on me, Fred!”

“Fine, I am abstemious by nature!”

Beatle puts his headphones around his neck and picks up an iPad from a small round table beside him, knocking his coffee mug on the floor.

“Has that damn thing spilled?”

“No, Beatle, it is empty.”

“Alright, Steve, I’ll get another mug when Boyd gets here.”

“Would that be Boyd Nightingale?”

“Yeah, you know him, Fred?”

“Not well, but yes.”

“He’s a sweet kid. I am educating him in classical music and the dangers of female entanglements.”

Beatle taps his iPad.

“Did you load all your recorded music on that iPad?”

“No, Fred, this is the controller.  The music is on a separate hard drive downloaded from my CDs in those ammo boxes and online.”

I get up to get his coffee mug.

“Leave it. Get it later.”

“What were we listening to, Steve?”

“Oh! Is this going to be a listening session?”

“What else is there to do, Fred? Argue about politics?”

“Anything but that!”

“Let’s do the Brahms string sextet that was interrupted last time?”

“Okay Steve, that’s number two in G, opus 36. Played by Harriet Krijgh & Friends.”

Beatle taps his iPad and the opening floats out of his old Klipsch horn speakers standing to the left of his stereo.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVKwCjZ_zUQ)

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right. 

Four new brown Adirondack chairs are arranged on a bed of mulch in the shade of the crabapple tree behind Diddlie’s carport. A laurel bush, two hydrangeas and a serviceberry, will partly screen them from the street, until fall. 

Diddlie comes out of her kitchen door walking towards me.

“Hi Fred, have you come over to try out my new chairs?”

“Ah, I didn’t know you had them.”

“So, what did you come over for?”

“I saw Lou working back here as I walked by the carport and thought I would check on our lunch date, Wednesday.”

“You mean you didn’t come on my property to see me at all?”

“Diddlie, I am always glad to see you.”

“Well, that’s more like it!”

We walk over to the new chairs.

“See, no paving, just mulch.”

“Well done, let the rain soak in.”

Lou looks up as he takes off his gloves and throws them into the empty wheelbarrow, recently full of mulch. “She has an ‘all-natural’ patio’!

Diddlie is holding the chair info sheet she pulled from the pile of cardboard flatpack the chairs came in.

“Fred, these chairs are made of high-density polyethylene.”

“All natural, Lou?”

“No Fred, the mulch and shade are.”

“True enough, no umbrellas no awning.” 

Lou brushes some mulch off his jeans. “Natural shade for this famous fake wood!”

Two crows fly over us spreading their caws to anyone with ears.  They settle in a willow oak next door, in Jake Trips’ yard, keeping up a low-pitched commentary among themselves.

Diddlie gathers some mulch from the lawn with the side of her pink and yellow SnazE ‘SuperFlex’ slip-on walking shoe. “It hasn’t rained for over a month.”

Lou pushes the wheelbarrow out of the way of the chairs. “We got a few drops last week”

“Right, enough to wet dry leaves and soak my jeans when I brushed past the hydrangea on the way to my compost heap.”

Lou is still trying to get the last of the mulch off his jeans.”

“It often rains all around us, but not here.”

“I know, it is the ‘DC Distortion Zone’.”

“What is that, Fred?”

“Political pressure.” 

“Is that barometric?”

“Only if you have a political barometer.”

Diddlie folds up her info sheet.

“I saw one for sale online!”

“How much Did.?”

“I think the subscription was thirty bucks a month with exclusives!”

“Did you buy it?”

“No, I don’t have time to read that stuff.”

“Look, even the violet’s leaves are drying out and floppy and folded over.”  

Diddlie contemplates her new chairs.

A jet passes over. Its roar changes pitch to a whistle as it descends toward Calvin Coolidge National Airport.  The crows fly off and the disturbance subsides.

Lou’s yellow DeWalt drill with Phillips head screwdriver lies on the wide arm of a chair.

“You up for lunch, Fred?”

“I thought it was tomorrow.”

“It was. You got time today?”

Diddlie pulls on Lou’s sleeve but looks at me.

“Why don’t you guys try out my new chairs?”

Lou picks up his drill and shows me the magnetized Philips head as he wipes off some metal particles. “I don’t know what those screws were made of, but they must have a little ferric materiel in them.”

“It might be zinc.  That’s what my patio screen is fastened with.”

Lou puts it in the wheelbarrow on top of his gloves. 

“The last part of that chair job required three hands.”

“Lou, I told you I could help.”

“Diddlie, you were making bird bread for the parrot, remember?”

“Well, the Red Queen’s food was running low.”

“Anyway, I don’t know anyone with more than two hands.”

“Okay Lou, I am sorry, okay?”

“No problem Diddlie.”

“I am trying to balance Queenie’s diet with more legumes.” 

“This sun still has plenty of heat in it.”

We sit down in the mottled shade.  A leaf shadow plays on Diddlie’s face opposite me and her eyes appear to flash.

“So, am I invited to this lunch of yours?”

Lou looks at me and I at him.

“Oh, my! Gentlemen, is this decision so hard?”

“We are still discussing which day, Did.”

“Well, okay Fred, I am buying for the guy who assembled my chairs.”

“So, have you got time today, like about now?”

“Sure, Lou.”

“Diddlie, how about you?”

“Oh, I have plenty of time, today or tomorrow.”

Lou gets up and grabs the wheelbarrow handles but turns back to us. “I need to shower first.”

“Okay, Fred and I will meet you down at the H bar in a while.”

“Give me half an hour.”

He takes the barrow back to the carport.

“Fred, you are sitting on old milk jugs, laundry detergent bottles and other trash.”

“What a nightmare!”

“What do you mean it isn’t in a landfill, at least!”

“We need to stop making that stuff.”

Diddlie, looks up into the trees, saying nothing.  High clouds obscure the sun and the radiant heat ceases as if it had been switched off.

“Fred.”

“Yes.”

“Do you like my new chairs?”

“Yes, very comfortable.”

“Don’t you like the backs high enough to rest your head against?”

I lean back to enjoy the benefit and close my eyes hearing the faint sound of a distant gas-powered lawnmower.

“Ah, Fred, have I put you to sleep?”

“No, your new chair might, if it quiets down around here.”

“Okay, I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Diddlie watches a crow on the power lines as it makes three calls.  

There’s a passing buzz in my ear and open my eyes to see a visiting yellow jacket on my knee.  Then I brush something off my head.  Diddlie yells and gets up slapping her neck.

“I am getting stung!”

She runs toward the house, and I follow, getting stung on my wrist by the one I tried to brush off.

We stand in the kitchen looking through the protective screen door.

“Vote candy, eat dates”

The Red Queen calls from the living room.

“Is she doing political commentary, now?”

“I don’t know where she got that from.”

“Polly ticks Polly Tocks”

“She is into timing, that’s my guess.”

“Relate, debate, candy vote dates.”

A yellow jacket crawls up the screen with its striped pointed back dragging in the gaps.

“There must be a nest by the chairs somewhere.”

“They probably enjoy the fallen apples, Fred.”

“What took them so long to come after us?”

“Maybe they were buried in mulch.”

Diddlie turns away and soon returns with a spray bottle of Windex and sprays the insect which falls away in the ammonia fumes.

“That takes care of one of those little stingers!”

She stands pressing against me with her finger on the bottle trigger.”

“Look at those things, Fred!”

Large black-backed bees are climbing in and out of the roses of Sharon’s violet bells over by the compost heap.

“Those are carpenter bees.”

“Well, I don’t want to get stung by one of those monsters!”

“They didn’t sting us. I think they are on a mission.”

“I know Fred, it was wasps but look at the size of those things!”

“Did, your HDPE chairs are safe!”

“I know, they only drill into wood.”

“Let’s get going Did.”

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right. 

I find Daisy sitting in the Pie Shop with her old friend Val Eliot. Val’s black-framed glasses have rounded rectangles like old TV screens.  Wavey black hair hangs down the side of her face. Val holds a piece of plastic-coated card.  Her laptop is on the table in front of her—Daisy waves to me and gestures towards a vacant seat at their table.

“What is that thing?”

“Val, do you remember Fred?”

“Hi Fred, this is a wrapper that cannot be opened.”

“Yes, it’s a big trend in retail.”

Val turns it over in her hands.

“A small thing imprisoned in a transparent plastic blister on this big piece of thin cardboard stock.”

“A Universal Serial Bus, or USB.”

“You are quite the techy, Daisy.”

“I read that on the package, Fred, while we were browsing in SnazE. It’s the interface,  basically a flash drive.”

“Is that printed there too?”

Val shows me the back of the rectangle where the information is printed.

“I am going to put my stock list and passwords, and stuff on it.”

Val is scrutinizing the card, still searching for a way to open it.

“Aren’t they already protected on your computer?”

“This is backup, Fred, and there are some I just keep in my head, which also needs backup.”

“I get that. You will probably need a pair of scissors to free your drive.”

“Do you have a pair, Fred?”

“No, not on me.”

“I’ll go ask at the counter.” Daisy gets up and walks over to the barista, who is waiting for customers.

Val hands me the imprisoned object of her attention.

“Do you see any secret access point?”

I look at the back for a dotted line indicated by an ‘open here’ instruction.

“No, I don’t. This thing is serving a life sentence.”

“Right, and how many thousand years does plastic last?”

“Who knows?”

“Obviously, I can’t wait it out!”

“No, it devolves into nano and microplastics which are now everywhere.”

“Devo!”

“I saw a bumper sticker the other day saying, ‘Devo was right’.”

Daisy returns without scissors.

“They don’t serve customers with scissors.”

“We don’t have any scissors!”

“I know Val, I mean they do not have any for loan.”

“Not even something with a little flavoring? Vanilla or spearmint, say?”

“Val, who ever heard of flavored scissors?  Besides, no flavor will free that thing!”

“Think of scented handles, Daisy. Surely, they have loose catnip!”

“Why should they?”

“Because they have a cat.  I saw a tabby in the back when the cashier went through the swing door.”

“Wow! That might have been ‘Sfumato’.  She used to hang out in Arty Bliemischt’s studio, right above here.”

I shake my head, “Sfumato was a tortoiseshell, not a tabby.”

“Oh! right Fred, Didn’t Arty take her when she moved out?”

“I don’t know.” 

“Anyway, if they have catnip, I am sure it is only for cats.”

“Val, you mean if a cat came in here, they would serve the feline with a nip?”

“Mrs. Rutherford would, Val.  The barista referred me to their website.”

“Oh! Right, some corporate concoction, thousands of words of legalese covering every possible sort of liability in relation to Felis catus.”

“Cactus, what that got to do with it?”

“No, ‘Catus’, not cactus, it’s a legal document, and therefore larded with Latin!”

Val sips her mint tea. “I remember Mrs. Rutherford from my last visit. Where is she when we need her?”

Daisy drains her coffee and the bracelets on her right arm cascade from her wrist to her elbow. “She left after the place was bought out by Jake Trip.”

“She would have provided scissors!”

“No doubt, Val.”

“Now this is corporate-owned.”

“And ruled, Val. They knocked the word ‘Cavendish’ off the name.  Now it is just, ‘The Pie Shop’.”

Daisy folds her arms on the table. The bracelets rattle on the top catching a sunbeam coming in under the awning, which is only halfway down. “They might at least have called it the ‘Fauxmont Pie Shop’!”

“Well, nobody used the full name of the place.  When did you last hear anyone refer to the ‘Cavendish Pie Shop’?”

“Can’t remember, Fred, but the name over the door was unique.”

“True, how many coffee shops are named after a Lab?”

“There might be one in Cambridge, Fred.”

“Yes, that’s where Henry Cavendish discovered hydrogen back in the eighteenth century.  He called it inflammable air.”

“Well, they might have changed the name to, “Henry’s Place” with an explanatory plaque!”

“Fred, why don’t you suggest that to the management?”

“Ha, ha, ha, as if they would listen to me!”

Val has used a thin flat key from her crowded ring to force a small separation between the plastic and the card.  She holds up the key.

“The key to this prison. Here we go!”

She is pressing the key further in between the two layers.

“At this rate, you won’t get the thing out until after Christmas!”

“Okay, Daisy, have you got a pocketknife?”

“Here, try one of these plastic knives.

I hand her my plastic knife, unneeded, for my Blueberry Extravaganzo, advertised as ‘The best muffin experience on the Eastern Seaboard’.”

Val tries to press the blade into the gap she has made, and it snaps.

“Okay! Look at that.”

“Good one Val, the sharp end ought to finish the job.”

“It is probably going to break off!”

It does.

“Alright, now there is enough of a flap to pull apart.”

She grasps the small newly separated pieces and starts pulling them apart. The cardboard tears off just short of her objective in the plastic blister.

“Here, try this.”

The barista puts a paring knife on the table.

“Well, thanks!”

Val eases the blade towards her imprisoned thumb drive and twists it gently, making a gap wide enough for it to drop onto the table.

“Good tool!”

She hands him the knife.  He walks back to his counter.

“Now I need to load all my customers on here.” 

She starts up the computer and plugs the drive into the side.

“This thing needs more juice!”

Val pulls a small battery with a solar panel, from her bag.

“Here’s a recharge!”  She plugs the cable from the battery into the second port on the side of her MacBook Air.

“What kind of service do you provide?”

“Fred, it is a store in Western Massachusetts, called “Factotum Books”, and we have a sideline in self-publishing.”

“That sounds like a tough business!”

“It is. We have not made a profit since we opened in 2013.”

“How do you stay afloat in the internet age?”

“My partner was a wealthy doctor at Mass General, and she left us an endowment when she died in 2019.”

“That qualifies as a minor miracle!”

“Indeed, doc assured that we will always have the best of literature in English and selected translations on the shelf.”

“The best in who’s judgement?”

“Hers!”

“Do you agree with it?”

“Mainly, but I have my doubts about the list being relevant to the next generation.”

“Well, as long as literature is taught in colleges and schools, there should be a demand.”

“That changes over time, though.”

“So, what does Factotum publish?”

“We specialize in local writers, a couple of poets, a romance novelist, and our best seller is a guide to native herbs and mushrooms in the locality.”

“Yeah, I would buy that!”

“Doc was shocked when she found her nephew had graduated in English from Prestige University, right here, without ever reading a book.”

“That is absurd!”

“Fred, he just read study guides online to write his papers, and memorized for tests, and that was it.”

“With ChatGPT he wouldn’t even have to write!”

Daisy puts a hand on Val’s arm.

“Did he learn anything?”

“Yeah, he is a competent techy and an expert at online searches.  He can also manage the store when I am away.” Val sips some more mint tea. “He is also the store’s only other employee.”

Daisy takes her hand off Val’s arm and her bracelets rattle on the table.

“Val, what about the human part of the so-called humanities?”

“Taylor Swift seems to be a good source.”

“Okay, I mean the pleasure of reading.  I have always been a painter, but reading has kept me sane at times.”

“Like what?”

“Like, Mark Twain, you know, ‘A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.’”

“Well, there isn’t anyone like Mark Twain.”

“Ain’t that the truth!”

“My nephew listens to podcasts and reads a lot online.”

“No, I mean imaginative reading.  Like reading Jane Austin or Herman Melville.”

“Daisy, dear Daisy!  Those dusty old tomes are not part of his world.”

“He had to study them I hope.”

“Sure, as I just explained, that was just a necessary hassle.”

“You mean the novels didn’t tell him anything?”

“Right, it is all in an eightienth or nineteenth-century context.”

I scrunch up the paper my muffin came in.  “Well, PU didn’t do its job!”

“Look, Fred, the so-called humanities have been screwed up!”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it is all about getting the degree, and the social status it confers.  I doubt if anyone is ever going to care what he knows about Mr. Darcy or events on the Pequod, for that matter.”

“How sad.”

“The sad part is that he doesn’t care either.” 

“Fred, I think you are right, but historically, how many people have ever read literature with a capital, L?”

“Okay, Val there is a certain amount of class and snobbery in all this, but there is more.”

“What? For instance.”

“Continuity, Val.”

“You mean tradition?”

“Yeah, it has been called the ‘main current.’”

“Right Fred, flowing from batteries through circuit boards and amplifiers!”

Val leans back and takes off her glasses holding them in the air,“You might say literary books are cultural batteries.”

“Music, too, I mean recordings.”

“Right Daisy, you need the right connector to get plugged in, though.”

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right. 

Even the cicadas are silent. There aren’t many in this year’s summer heat, which is more like a flood that a wave. A few of their finger-sized holes can be seen in the dry clay path we follow, passing by the remains of that old mansion, The Ashes.”

“It’s amazing to think that ruin includes the whole hilltop in its estate.”

“Fred, it is amazing to think this lot has not been subdivided.”

“Where are all the ash trees?” 

“The emerald ash borer wiped them out around here.

“There is something else very strange going on, though!”

“Like insects?”

“Ah, no, I was up here, back in 2016, with Diddlie. We were looking for Mr. Liddell.”

“Who brought him up here?”

“She said he had escaped up here before, so this is where we looked.”

“That’s right, she said something about it to me.”

“Anyway, we got separated, because she started gathering flowers especially goldenrod.”

“Yeah, she’s been doing that ever since I’ve known her.”

“I looked into that old garage.”

”I know, it seems to be in good condition.”

“Found Rank Majors in there, working on a vehicle.”

“Rank! what he was doing there?”

“Lou, I have never mentioned this to anyone.”

“That was probably wise, where Rank is concerned.”

“Let me tell you. It is fitted out as a shop. He was working from the old grease pit.”

“Do you remember what make was the vehicle?”

“I don’t remember because he dropped a bolt or a wrench or something.”

“What has that got to do with it?

“The thing fell into the pit and then went down further! A big distraction.”

“What do you mean further?”

“Lou, I tell you, there is a big installation under here.”

“You mean, under our feet?”

“Possibly, I got disoriented down there.”

“So, you followed Rank down there?”

“No, I saw Mr. Liddell going down into the pit and went after him. I found a big server farm, isles and aisles of IT equipment on racks.”

“In the pit?”

“No, through a narrow metal door off the far end of the pit and down a lot more steps.”

“I have been in that garage, but this is news to me.”

“Yeah, a guy called Stan, stopped me.  At least his voice did. Didn’t see him at first, and when I did, I recognized him from when they dug the deep foundation for that place on the old Sloot lot.”

“Stan, huh?  Are you sure he was using ‘Stan’?”

“Certain, as I said, I had seen him before.”

“Fred, don’t talk about it to anyone else.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I have heard rumors and whispers about a subterranean installation here but never got confirmation like this.”

“Stan had not seen Mr. Liddell and didn’t know who Diddlie was.”

We have stopped in the shade of some juniper trees covered with wild grape vine.

“Someone screwed up, big time, if you got in there. I am sure of that.”

”So, what are you thinking, super-secret government stuff?”

“Could be organized crime.”

“Do you think I would have got out alive if that was it?”

“Who knows?”

“Diddlie told me it was dead people’s data.”

“How does she know?”

“She said she just figured it out herself.”

”So, she is aware of this too!”

“I don’t know. She didn’t seem surprised, though.”

“Buried corpses and buried data.  I guess it makes some kind of sense.”

“Come on Lou, spit it out! What is down there?”

“I honestly don’t know and don’t want to know.  Even criminals make mistakes.”

“Stan led me to a pull-down ladder, like you have for an attic.  I climbed up and through a hatch into a hallway with a small bedroom off it. It was over the mansion’s garage, I think, near the kitchen which is still intact.”

“Fred, this isn’t adding up!”

“No, it didn’t at the time.”

“Did you find the white rabbit?”

“Mr. Liddell was in the bedroom and ran off from under an eiderdown.”

“And Diddlie, where did she get to?”

“I found her in the kitchen arranging flowers.”

“That at least, does make sense because we use that kitchen for community parties on the lawn.”

“So, is it dead people’s data collected down there?”

“I doubt it.”

“What do you think it is?”

“Something the secret owner of this vacant lot wants to keep secret.”

“Well, the lot must be worth several million.”

High-pitched mosquitos make the only movement in the humid air, winging out of sight.

Lou smacks his ear and looks at his hand.

“Missed!”

“Those things feel your hand coming through the air.”

“Right, that’s why fly swatters are made of wire net.”

“So, what kind of net have we under here?”

“You know, I suspect the Leiden Organization may be mixed up in this.”

“Why Leiden Organization?”

“The Leiden Organization is now a loose cooperative of many different groups.”

“Yes, I read that they are involved with drug money.”

“They have huge government and corporate contracts, too.”

“Okay, so they can do all kinds of things!”

“Right Fred, but it is also very profitable.”

“Sure, think how the value of the Sloot house has gone up.”

“And that is just a minute part of the enterprise.”

“Who lives there now?”

“Westard North, I think, but he is not the owner.”

“Do you know who is?”

“The county record just shows, ‘de Geer Properties’.”

“That sounds familiar for some reason.”

“The same name is listed for the Trip house after he went bankrupt back in 2014.”

“That’s it.  I am told, Jake’s first wife was Margret Geer!”

“The marriage didn’t last long.’

“Was she an heiress or something?”

“I don’t know but the story is that he was very young and fell in love with an ‘older woman’.”

“The woman or her fortune?”

“No, I understand it was true love.”

“Like Emmanuel Macron!”

“There you are stranger things have happened!”

“So, if de Geer is a shell, it owns three properties, in Fauxmont, on whose behalf?”

“Well, let’s see, The Ashes estate, the old Sloot house, and Jake Trip’s house.”

“All those properties have exceptionally deep basements.” 

“I have found some other of mysterious connections.”

“Yes, this has the odor of The Leiden Organization, alright.”

“Ever heard of Van Rijn Estates?”

“Well of course, Paula Pocock used to live there with her mother.”

“They are part of the mix.”

“What do you mean, ‘the mix’?”

“When I was searching the county tax records and found de Geer Properties, I also found the Van Rijn Estate was sold to the developer by de Geer.”

“Who was the realtor?”

“Ahh, now I can’t think of it.  The name didn’t ring any bells.”

I walk on behind Lou through tall Japanese honeysuckle wound with a tangle of porcelain berry, green brier and wisteria reaching out at us with curling summer whips.  Lou is still fighting the mosquitos.

“We need some bug spray, Fred.”

“I’ll settle for a frost.”

“A frost in July? Not in this hemisphere.”

“We will be lucky to get any frost this Winter.”

“Don’t forget, global warming can bring big local variations in weather.”

“Yes, as circulation patterns vary with the heat.”

We have nearly cut through the vacant property, from Wickett Street down to Bails Lane.  Past a big patch of Joe Pye weed with bumblebees crowding on the chalky pink composite flowers.

“It was 96 Fahrenheit when I left the house.”

“It will be over a hundred today.”

“Mind that poison ivy!”

” Looks like blackberry.”

Lou tries to kick the stem out of the way, but it bounces back in front of us.

“I think they have cross pollinated.”

“Those thorns are persuasive!”

We plod on, out of the intermittent shade of the path, across the old lawn, where Fauxmont celebrates the Fourth of July with food and fireworks. The expanse of brown grass and green weeds with bald patches is diminishing under flourishing ivy, which spreads out from the far side.

“This heat is ridiculous. We should be wearing pith helmets and bush jackets.”

“Will I have to call you “Bwana”, Fred?”

“Only if we go back about a century.”

“Who’s idea was this safari?”

“Your’s, Lou, don’t you remember?”

“No, the heat has wiped my wet drive.”

“Racoons?”

“Oh right!  Diddlie is convinced that invading racoons are coming from up here somewhere.”
“You fixed her attic and eaves years ago!”

“She thinks they are frightening Mr. Liddell in the night.”

“Is he screaming or something?”

“I don’t know.”

“So, what is her story.”

“Fred, she is kind of incoherent on the subject.”

“We haven’t seen any spoor.”

“Not even a footprint in that soft ground by the dry pond.”

“I saw water in it a few years ago.”

“Yes, it was fed by a spring which stopped in the drought.”

“Like so many others around here.”

“The regional water table is dropping.”

We break through to Bails Lane, past a tall mature holly crowned with Virginia creeper.

“Fred, let’s go and cool off at the H bar.”

“Well, she said she would meet us at one o’clock.”

“Let’s be early, it is only twelve twenty-six.”

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right. 

Steve Strether stands in the middle of Maxwell Avenue with Ossian sitting next to him.  There is no traffic at the moment, and the light is green. He pulls on Ossian’s leash, but the dog refuses to stand up as the harness moves up, tightening towards his ears.

“You better pick him up, Steve!”

“He will be a handful!”

“Trouble is heading toward you both!”

“I am hoping this light will turn red.”

A Metro bus approaches from the left and Ossian goes into a crouch.  The light turns red.

The bus stops with a hiss of breaks and Ossian rears up to attack.

“Here we go, Ossi.”

As Ossian is on his feet Steve pulls him towards me, waiting at the roadside.  Ossi stumbles along behind Steve, turning on the bus and growling every few steps.

“We didn’t get far this morning.”

“How long have you been at the intersection?”

“A few minutes, but it seems longer.”

“Pretty dangerous habit.”

“Well, yes, we spent about ten minutes hanging out by our gate waiting for something to happen.”

“Westies have their own agenda, I believe.”

“Ossian does.  Some mornings he is in a hurry and others he just waits for some action and won’t move on.”

Ossian sniffs my shoes, all signs of hostility gone. He puts his forepaws up on my knee for an ear-rub.

“Bel mentioned you are studying Frans Hals.”

“I don’t know about studying. I have been looking at Frans Hals’s Portrait of a Gentleman, in the National Gallery.”

“One of those old Dutch gents in a tall black hat and black doublet?”

“Yes, one of those! He lived and worked in Haarlem where the authorities of the time didn’t approve of religious painting, and this opened a market for his secular work.”

“Didn’t he paint ‘The Laughing Cavalier’?”

“He did, but the guy isn’t a cavalier.”

“How do you know?”

“They were soldiers. That man is a civilian.”

“Why is he called, The Laughing Cavalier?”

“Good question!”

“The expression isn’t so much a laugh as a grin.” 

“Right, or something coming before he breaks into a laugh.”

“Or something else.”

“Frans leaves us to guess.”

“That isn’t in the National Gallery, is it?”

“No, it is in London at the Wallace Collection.”

https://www.wallacecollection.org/explore/collection/search-the-collection/laughing-cavalier

“Well, I have seen reproductions on cookie tins, dish cloths, and mugs and even a covid mask.”

“He is a good salesman.”

“He is as flamboyant as a cavalier!”

“Hals was very good at getting the complexion of those wealthy, old, red-bearded guys.”

Ossian has stopped by a hydrant and sits looking up and down the street.

“Here we go again.”

“Or don’t go!”

Steve stands over him and pull up the harness, but Ossian won’t budge.

“Let’s give him a little time to hang out, Steve.”

“Sure.”

Steve steps back to join me in the shade of an ironwood tree growing along the fence by the hydrant.

“You know that painting was popular and made Hals’s name, in England, at least.”

“Which?”

“The so-called Cavalier who isn’t exactly laughing.”

“Isn’t it interesting how some works win popularity, and others don’t?”

“Just like now, it was the price that put it in the news.”

“Oh, did it go for millions?”

“The painting cost fifty thousand pounds which was huge in the 17^th century.”

“Must be equivalent to at least three million now.”

“Oh, sure, and it would fetch multimillions today.”

“Do you think he is giving us a good-natured look or is he smirking at us from on high?”

“I think people tend to project something of themselves in reading his expression.”

“Probably, as we don’t know him, do we?”

“No, I haven’t found his name, but have not researched very far.”

“What aroused your interest in Hals?”

“A chance, really.”

“What do you mean?”
“I was looking at a book on Rembrandt by Simon Sharma where he mentions, “the first rule of Militia feast paintings” which Van Rijn had broken in painting, ‘The Night Watch’.”

“Which turned out to be daytime after cleaning, a while back!”

For me Fred, it will always be, ‘The Night Watch’, even if the night is just old varnish and dirt.”

“Have you been reading about Rembrandt too?”

“I often find the reproductions more interesting than the text, but Sharma is good.”

“Yes, okay, and Hals?”

“That phrase, ‘Militia feast paintings’, aroused me to look further.”

“Did Hals do the customary thing?”

“Well, Frans followed tradition.  Take a look at ‘Banquet of the Officers of the St Hadrian Civic Guard.” (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Frans-Hals_Banquet_of_the_Officers_of_the_St_Hadrian_Civic_Guard_Company_WGA11092.jpg

“Never seen it.”

“Well, I haven’t seen it, ‘in person’, but reproductions show twelve flamboyant officers in their best outfits, some seated, some standing around a table that looks too small for them all. They are looking in different directions trying to make an impression.”

“You make it sound chaotic.”

“I think it is, in a sense.”

“Maybe they are disputing politics after too many beers!”

“Each man is shown to advantage, it seems to me.”

“Is that customary?”

“It is.  Each officer is probably rendered with a good likeness with all the accouterments of his social and military position.”

“I remember Hals’s paint sometimes looks as if it just settled out of a cloud.”

“Yeah, Fred, brush strokes that might have floated down from a hawk attack!”

“It looks like it was put down quickly, don’t you think, Steve.”

“It does, but I think each stroke is carefully placed, the energy comes from his touch.”

“A feathery touch!”

Ossian is back in his crouch, watching a Golden Retriever’s approach, with tail waving behind her like a banner.

“Here comes one of his friends!”

“I think that is Pam Dirac holding the leash.”

This time Ossi leaps forward and greets his friend by jumping up to nip her ear.  He circles, to get a whiff off her hind parts. She places a heavy paw on his back and stops him. We humans exchange pleasantries while the dogs enjoy their brief reacquaintance.  Pam and her ‘golden’ walk back towards Maxwell Avenue and we walk on, up the steep slope of Oval Street.

“Steve, I haven’t seen her since her picture was all over “Backstairs” for winning Fauxmont chess championship.”

“What is “Backstairs?”

“Well, you know, it is our neighborhood news and gossip site!”

“I never go there, Fred.”

“She played in Derwent’s after-school chess club, years ago.”

“Yeah, I remember now. After that picture came out, Derwent Sloot never let anyone one forget it!”

“Imagine The Fauxmont Guild commissioning a painting of the Fauxmont Militia!”

“Sothey won’t be forgotten.”

“Yeah, Steve, and hang it at the Fauxmont Preschool, to inspire the youngsters.”

“I am doubtful about inspiring them with martial glory, Fred.”

“It could be a Fourth of July thing.”

“Why not a big photo?”

“Yes, or even a video!”

“The trouble is, Fred, our Militia don’t wear colorful outfits with sashes, helmets and swords, and all that.” 

“We have a different aesthetic. The Fauxmont Militia have 21^st century tactical gear.”

“Yup, a lot of black and Camo.” 

“It might go on Instagram.”

“Yes, for younger audiences, but what about the ‘Geezer Audience’?”

“The over fifties?”

“Maybe, or the prematurely gray young aesthetic conservatives.”

“There’s always the nostalgics!”

“Let’s not forget the bald, Fred.”

“I may be bald, but I don’t accept ‘geezerhood’.”

“I think our militiamen should be standing in and around an armored vehicle.

Possibly a Hummer ‘surplused’ from the desert operations of the oil wars.”

“What oil wars?”

“In my opinion, we went into Iraq to get control of the oil.”

“In 2003, you mean.”

“Yes, the World War II generation who knew the cruel and messy realities of war, have aged out. So, we got into that mess.”

“What about the nukes that nobody could find?”

“What about them?”

“Anyway, Steve, let’s pose our Fauxmont Militia with some interesting dogs.”

“Belgian Malinois and Dobermans are good military breeds.”

“And German shepherds.”

“Yes, in front of the old barn behind Mrs. Rutherford’s Pie Shop.”

“Steve, wasn’t that pulled down?”

“You’re right, remember? That’s why Artie Bliemisch had to move.”

Ossi has jumped into the damp shade of the roadside ditch, to investigate the culvert going under Diddlie’s driveway. He barks into the pipe’s darkness. Steve pulls him back. 

“Three leaves!”

“What about them, Fred?”

“Ossi just brushed past that poison ivy.”

Fred points it out, flourishing in the shade of some overhanging Japanese honeysuckle, higher up the incline.

“It usually wears off his fur if he keeps going.”  He brushes his sleeve across his sweating face.
 “As I keep going, I find myself living more and more in the past, Fred!”

“Seventeenth Century Haarlem, in fact!”

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right. 

Phone in hand, Dimbleby Moreaboutcha is looking out over the river from the bench along Wicket Street. Where it follows the top of the escarpment.  He sits on an empty plastic bag in the damp morning sun.  Looks like rain is still falling in Maryland across the Potomac.

I walk over to him with folded umbrella.

“Good morning Dimble!”

I ask him about the festive meal we all enjoyed at The Emperor Babur restaurant the previous weekend.

“It brought back memories.”

“Did the meal compare favorably?”

“No, he came to me while I was shaving this morning.”

“What?”

“The meal was fine. I am overloaded with associations.”

He belches.

“Someone to accompany your mirror image?”

“Yeah, I was focused on the right side of my chin, in fact.”

“You are clean-shaven, I see.”

“My razor irritated a small wart which marks the spot where Alonzo Ganes slugged me back in the nineties.”

“Ouch! What provoked him?”

Dimbleby holds up his phone.

“This thing is going to go off any minute.  Excuse me in advance.  I am going to answer it and walk away.”

“Yeah, okay, I will stick with the view here.”

“I wrote a story about him.”

“I guess you’re not the first reporter to suffer retribution!”

“Far from it.  We had just enjoyed good North Indian Tandoor.”

“So, he didn’t attack you over the table.”

“No, Alonzo got mad as we were climbing the stairs and it happened in the Hadron Parking lot.”

“From The Emperor Babur’s stairs?”

“No, it was called, The Star of India at that time.”

“Well, the steep stairs aren’t your fault!”

“No, you want to sit down?  This thing is drying off.”

“Sure.”

We share the bench and the view across the river and watch a tour boat cruise past with empty outdoor seats.

“It wasn’t the stairs.”

“No, were you badly hurt?”

“His fist only grazed me, but it chipped a couple of teeth.”

“Did you throw a punch?”

“No, no, I resorted to verbal retaliation and drove away.”

“Good man!”

“Alonzo was drunk and didn’t have a car.”

“We all got well lubricated last week as far as I can remember.”

“Rosey Pelicans were flocking to our table.”

“Even though the bird is extinct!”

“It wings through my thoughts alright.  Who was that artist woman I was sitting next to.”

“That was Daisey Briscoe.”

“Yeah, I had designs.”

“Did you?  Daisey teaches drawing at PU.”

“Yeah, she mentioned her students a couple of times, but I was distracted by Hermione.”

“I don’t remember her.”

“She is my wife. Well, she was, ah strictly speaking, ah ah.”

“Okay.”

“Guilt, soaked in Indian beer didn’t do much for my sleep.”

“But aren’t you separated?”

“By the Appalachians, the great plains, and the Rockies and then some.”

“She still dwells in you, though.”

“She weighs on me.”

“Perhaps a fling would unburden you?”

“She and Alonzo were pretty tight.”

“Sounds like a tense situation.”

“No, far from it.  We were all comfortable together.”

“How did she react to the attack?”

“This was before we met.”

Dimble’s ring tones sound.  He taps his screen and is a little unsteady getting up. 

He taps the screen again and sits down.  The SnazE plastic bag falls from his butt where it stuck for the moments he was using his phone.

“Yeah, Alonzo is an art historian at PU.”

“Art historian and pugilist!”

“I never knew him to sock anyone else.”

“Was it the Rosey Pelicans?”

“Alcohol has never brought it out in him before.”

“Did you mention Alonzo to Daisy?”

“She didn’t know him.”

“No, she is a studio teacher.”

“So, what are you doing up here so early, Fred?”

“My morning routine walk, meet, and talk to the neighbors.”

“What for?”

“I am interested in what people think.”

“There’s a lot of mindlessness out there.”

“Even people who speak in clichés, are moved by something.”

“What’s your job?”

“Full-time retirement.”

“Retired from what?”

“The government bureaucracy.”

“Oh, that quagmire!”

“Good benefits though.”

“Yeah, at my expense!”

“I pay taxes too, you know.”

“Yeah, it’s Congress, I mean it is decaying like an old molar.”

His phone rings again and he tries to get up but staggers back onto the bench.

“Hello, hello, who is this?” 

“Okay Jim, why are you calling me?”

He taps the phone and mutters his annoyance inaudibly.  We sit in silence. A brown squirrel runs in front of us chased by another up a small tree.

“Well, look at that, a sourwood tree!”

“I didn’t know what it was.”

“Fred, it’s the first one I’ve seen around here.”

“It may be the only one I have ever seen.”

“There’s a lot of them down in Tennessee.  It is hardwood, good and useful.”

“So, Dimble, tell me, what did you write about that art historian?”

“Yeah, what indeed? Do you know Diddlie Drates?  I think she lives around here.”

“Yes, I know her well.  She is only a few blocks away.”

“Okay.”

“I can introduce you if you like.”

“Ah, not right now.”

Dimble’s phone beeps.  He reads a text and responds briefly.

“Yeah, ah, okay, I am not ready for a meeting.”

“She lives at the top of Oval Street at 1667.”

“Right, ah, there is history here, you know.”

“Oh! am I hearing an Alonzo connection?”

“I finished off the Saki before leaving this morning.”

“Liquid breakfast!”

“Yeah.”

“Do you do news shows on BBC, or what?”

“I haven’t worked for them for a while.”

“Why did you leave?

“They, claim to have fired me.  I say I quit to finish a novel.”

“So, both things happened.”

“I was getting intimate regularly with the Saki.”

“I get it.”

Dimble looks at his phone, but it is silent.

“My novel is what got me in trouble with Alonzo.”

“You mean the same one you are working on now.”

“Different, with a little help from Saki.”

“Japanese help!”

“No, British.”

“But they, rather the Scots, make whiskey.”

“I am talking about Munroe.”

“As in Hector Hugh?”

“Well, the Japanese have been helping me lately.  You see, they got between me and Hermoine.”

“Sorry to hear that, Dimble.”

“Well, there’s other stuff too, of course.”

“Sure.”

“And you know, Alonzo thought my novel was about him.”

“Did he read it?”

“He read a draft.  Not even half of it.”

Dimble is feeling in his pockets.

“And was unhappy.”

“Well, the protagonist is an Art Historian.”

“What period?”

He pulls a piece of paper out of his pocket, looks at it, and scrunches back in.

“Seventeenth Century Dutch. Fabritius, Ter Borch, van Ruisdael, and Cornelia de Rijck, especially, de Rijk.”

“I don’t know de Rijk.”

“No, she painted birds.”

“Overshadowed in art history, by Rembrandt and Vermeer and so on.”

“Yeah, those guys are in the highest price range, so in our commercial culture, they are most valuable.”

“Don’t you think there are other grounds for the valuation?”

Dimble belches again coughs and spits.

“Excuse me; No, in a word.”

“You mean price, is it?”

“Well, there’s the museum racket and the prestige stakes, influential critics, and so on.”

“Yes, that is part of pricing, but what about the works themselves?”

“That is a sore subject.”

“Does that mean, no comment?”

“It means that is why Alonzo socked me and chipped my tooth.”

He shows his upper front teeth, exhibiting a chipped corner.

“That?”

“Yeah, I told him, I wrote that all these valuations are bullshit, and he took it personally.”

“Oh! You accused him of being a Racketeer!”

“I did not!”

“No.”

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right. 

Bel Vionnet lets the leash sag, as the sour smell of fresh spread mulch doesn’t distract Ossian from the subtleties, he finds on a dead poke weed stalk. 

“I always let him get a thorough sniff.”

“Good idea, enrich his mind!”

A lawn service truck and trailer rattles past.

Ossian pulls on his leash veering into the street, leaving his fascination with the pokeweed for the adventure of the chase.  

“He always attacks those trailers.”

“Imagine the scent trail streaming behind!”

“Yes, all the grass cuttings stuck in the machinery and whatever else was chopped up.”

We walk on, along Wicket Street, and left up Oval Street hill.

Tall Maynard Keyes stands by his long pink station wagon, parked at the top, outside Diddlie’s house.

Occasional gusts carry late pink cherry blossom into his graying windblown hair.  Moving the leash to her left hand, Bel points up the hill.

“Look at that huge pink Buick!”

“It must be Maynard’s.”

“Isn’t he Boyd’s friend?”

“Yes, I wonder what he is doing here.  I don’t think he knows Diddlie.”

We walk up to the driveway. Lark comes out of the carport chatting with Diddlie, who is carrying Mr. Liddell.  Diddlie beckons to us, in front of a deep purple azalea set off by the white dogwood above.

Maynard strolls over to them as we get to the car, to look at the rabbit.

“Fine looking specimen of Oryctolagus cuniculus.”

Diddlie, turns to Maynard. “What? Did you say cunnilingus?”

“No, I was referring to Leporidae, the family of rabbits and hares.”

“We don’t speak Latin here.”

Lark grabs her arm. “Oh! stop, Did!”

Maynard is smiling and reaches out to pet the rabbit with his broad palm.

“This is Mr. Liddell.”

“Delighted! I’m Maynard.” 

Mr. Liddell keeps his ears flat against his back.

“Remember me telling you what a huge help Maynard has been to Boyd and me, Did?”

“Where is Boyd?”

Diddlie has her back to the house as Maynard waves.

“He just came out of your front door.” Maynard steps away to answer his phone.

Boyd now has strawberry blond hair, worn down to his neck, with a little eyeliner. 

Diddlie turns to see him. “Boyd, where have you been?”

“I was talking to the Red Queen in the living room.”

Diddlie presents the rabbit to Boyd. “Must have been a long conversation.”

“Well, that parrot has a big vocabulary and I went to the powder room. Want to be ready to meet everyone.”

Boyd ignores Mr. Liddell as Ossian jumps up with his forepaws on Boyd’s left knee.

“What a cute dog!” 

Bel tightens her grip on the leash. “You look great, Boyd. This is Ossian.”

“Oh! Bel thank you! I haven’t seen you for, I don’t know how long!”

“It has been a couple of years, I think.”

Diddlie walks back to the carport, still chatting with Lark, and puts Mr. Liddell back in his hutch.

“How is your husband, Steve, isn’t it?”

“He is fine, studying Frans Hals.”

“On yeah, what a lively painter! I mean those banquet paintings are so animated!”

”I wouldn’t know, you and Steve should talk.”

“Oh sure, I don’t know when I last saw Steve either.”

“Where are you living now, Boyd?”

Another gust blows his hair over his forehead, and he moves it with a feminine toss of his head.

“Thanks to Maynard I have been staying with the Sorrell sisters over in DC.”

“Okay, that explains the long hiatus.”

“Yeah, I am like their maid, bel, doing the housework.”

“Well, how good of you!”

“Got to earn my keep.”

Lark is calling Boyd from the carport.

“Excuse me bel, I owe Mom more attention than she gets from me.”

Boyd turns back towards the carport pushing back his hair with both hands against the wind.

Maynard offers his hand to bel, after putting his phone back in his pocket.

“Excuse me, I am Maynard, I don’t think we have met.”

“Bel Vionnet, glad to meet a friend of Boyd’s.”

“The Sorrels are old friends of mine, by the way.”

“From student days, perhaps?”

“Well, just after, when I was peripherally involved in a scandalous affair.”

“How interesting!”

“Young Lucinda Sorrel was found out in an affair with her sixty-three-year-old high school drama teacher.”

“Sounds like an enriching experience for them both!”

“I am sure it was, but legally it was statutory rape.”

“What a nightmare!”

“Yes, it was that too, until a legal acquaintance of mine took the case and managed to minimize the damage to both.”

“Maynard! You were a friend indeed!”

“Honestly, I found Lucinda interesting, and her delightful sisters became dear friends, too.”

Boyd is running back to us.

“Sorry, bel, what did you ask?”

“The Sorrells, Boyd, do you know them all?”

“Oh, sure, Lidia, Lucinda, and Ottoline, we all share a huge house in DC”.

Lark and Diddlie catch up from the carport. Diddlie looks up at Maynard.

“You are a high-altitude individual.”

“Sadly, I am earthbound.”

Diddlie steps closer to Boyd, looking into face. “What are you guys talking about so intensely?”

“I am about to explain a scandal. Well, my life’s story, I guess!”

Lark puts her arm across Boyd’s shoulders.

“It is okay, Boyd.”

“So, Diddlie, I’ll tell you that Ottoline Sorrel is the artist who painted Adonis and the three Graces. I mean it is just beautifully done.”

“Like, what style?”

“Adonis is offering himself, fully extended, to them in old master style!”

“How big is it? I mean the painting.”

“It fills a wall upstairs in their house. Maybe four by six feet.”

“My God! Is it an oil painting?”

“Yes, kind of traditional except The Three Graces have blueish cartoon bubbles rising from the cigarettes in their lips.”

Lark claps her hands, laughing. “Cigarettes! No one smoked in those days!”

“That’s the point, Mom. They are making fun of Adonis too.”

“What are they saying?”

“Oh, I forget.”

Diddlie has folded her arms across her chest. “Oh no, are you telling me they are Lesbians?”

“Maybe, or maybe they just think he is a jerk.”

“What about the artist?”

“Ah, what about her, Diddlie?”

“I mean is she, like what gender? You know.”

“Ottoline is nonbinary, honey.”

“Oh, right, the pronoun thing.”

“Gender categories are kind of breaking up.”

“Yeah, I am confused by all the talk.”

“Like global warming, you know, more fluid.”

“I presume the Graces are nudes, right?”

“Just as curvy as Rubens’s or Botticelli’s.”

More cherry petals fill the air around us.

“You sure have learned a lot about art!”

“Of course, Diddlie, hanging out with those three. It’s like a perpetual life class.”

“So, you are their student.”

“Oh, among other things.”

“What things?”

“Like, loving.”

“Are you talking about sex?”

“Ah, I could be.” 

“Well, make up your mind.”

“No, sweety, I am asking you to make up yours.”

“Boyd, in my experience love and sex merge and diverge.”

“Inevitably?”

“No!”

“Well, you can have love without sex and you can sex without love.”

“Love can wear off though.”

Bel watches a helicopter overhead while restraining Ossian as he barks at a hysterically high pitch.

Boyd watches Ossian’s strenuous barking. “Your dog objects to helicopters!”

“No, Boyd, there must be a fox! Anyone see it?”

“Bel, I am sure he saw it run off when that thing went over.”

“Right, I wanted to point out before we were deafened, that love doesn’t wear off.”

Diddlie ignores the dog. “Okay bel, passion, attraction, interest, all that does.”

Bel looks up from Ossian who has bumped her leg to get her attention back.

“I agree with you there, Diddlie.”

Lark is shivering. “This wind is cold. Let’s go in the carport.”

“Oh Mom, you are such a delicate flower!”

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right. 

Rank Majors and Kemp, Rombout stand behind the old location of the Elegant Ostrich. Kemp with his AR 15 and Rank has an AK47 slung on his shoulder.The sun’s early warmth brought out cherry blossom spreading deep green shade on the grass and ivy around them.

“Spring started in early March this year.”

“Can’t come too early for me, Fred.”

“What happened to the CAP?

“What’s that, Fred?”

“The Cyber Anthropic Principle.”

“It served its purpose.”

“Which was?”

“It gave this store a name.”

“What about the art?”

“I don’t know much about it.”

“So, what is it now?” 

“Mac is moving his local campaign office here.”

“You mean today?”

“Right.”

Kemp holds up his weapon.

“We are security, Fred, me and Rank.”

“I get it.”

“So, are you expecting trucks and stuff to pull up?”

Kemp consults his phone and reads a text.

They have been stuck on Rout One for the last half hour. Now they are ten minutes away.”

“Yeah, I heard a lot of sirens about an hour ago.”

“It’s all the illegals.”

“What is?”

“The crime wave.”

“There is no crime wave, as far as I know.”

Rank hands me his phone with an article posted on the screen.

Gordon Byron’s byline, “Crimewave crashes out of Mexico, splashing our country with criminals from all over the world.”

“That is news to me.”

“Sure, the whole thing is being suppressed by the deep state.”

“They have kept it all from me, that is for sure.”

Rank steps over to speak in a confidential tone.

“Don’t worry buddy.  By next week, this whole storefront is going to be posting the real news, twenty-four-seven.”

“Like down at the Hadron Shopping Center.”

“Same technology but different newsfeed.”

“What will the difference be?”

“Our operation here will tune in to the Fauxmont Community.”

“There’s not many Macadamia supporters around here.”

“We are going to change that.  Bring them a whole new reality!”

A white Isuzu NPR HD box truck pulls up by the door with three blasts of the horn. Kemp walks over to greet the driver. The driver and her help dismount. 

Rank doesn’t move but looks up and down the alley between the back of the row of stores and the playing fields beyond the ivy and cherry trees.

“I want to be sure there’s no interference.”

“There isn’t much danger back here is there?”

“Fred, there’s homeless everywhere.”

“They are only looking for shelter and I have never seen a tent back here.”

“You never know who you are really up against, there’s gangsters, dopers, and thieves all mixed together.”

“Gangsters?”

“Sure, you ever heard of MS 13?”

 “La Mara Salvatrucha”

“What does that mean?”

“Something to do with the FMLN.  ‘La Mara’ is a street and when they disbanded some of them started up as a street gang for self-protection.”

“How do you know so much about it, Fred?”

“Probably read an article somewhere.”

“Like where?”

“Most likely the Post.”

“You mean the Washington Post? That’s all, fake news, Fred.”

“I think a good deal of it is for real.”

“For reality come to us! Our alternative facts are way better!”

“Well, anyway, I doubt if the gang will be here.”

“It pays to be ready, Fred.”

“Yes, but are you ready for the right thing?”

“We have pretty good data on Fauxmont residents.”

“Who is, ‘we’?”

“You know, our campaign.”

“I get it. So, what does it tell you?”

“It’s all worked up into algorithms so we can keep adding to the effectiveness of our messaging.”

“You think you will get through with all that hate speech in our community?”

“This will be different.”

Albrecht opens the gray double metal doors of the store, from inside.  The driver lowers the lift in the back of the truck and wheels two office chairs, draped with plastic, into the building.

“Hey, Fred!”

“Albrecht! I hear you are moving in.”

“Yeah, you want to volunteer?”

“No thanks, I support the other side.”

“Come on Fred!  Get with the winners. Join the Fauxmont Militia!”

“Not my thing Albrecht.”

He beckons and I walk over to the open doors, and he takes me up to the front.  Two vans are parked outside, and technicians are mounting screens to fill the display windows.

“This is going to be a high-class operation!”

“Sounds good for the neighborhood.”

“We have Gordon Byron making an appearance here next Saturday.”

“Oh yes, after his speech at PU.”

“Yeah, I heard him speak last year.”

“Really, I have never been to one of his events.”

“He says it’s all about associations, Fred.”

“It is?”

“Yeah, and he is an expert at making convincing associations.”

“You mean your data tell you what kind of associations people in Fauxmont make?”

“Now you are getting it.”

“Perhaps so!”

“They have digital profiles on millions and millions of voters.”

“Sounds like the ‘Surveillance State’.”

“No, no, no, this isn’t the government, this a privately held company.”

“Corporate Surveillance then.”

“Hey, more data make for higher profits.”

“I still think there is something wrong with it.”

“Gordon says, ‘It’s all about power and belief’.”

“Sure, belief moves voters.”

“So, we cast doubt on the other side’s beliefs by promoting our alternatives.” 

“Albrecht, hardly anyone in Fauxmont believes them.”

“That’s okay, it’s like our law suites. We keep losing but they keep us in the news every day.”

“So true!”

“Okay, Fred, If I say, ‘gender’, what comes to mind?”

“Pronouns.”

“There you are. What do you use, him or her, or them?”

“Well, other people know me as him.”

“So, do you think gender is fixed at birth or can be changed by grooming?”

“I agree with bel Vionnet, people should be whatever they feel themselves to be.”

“Okay, some people think it is fixed male or female. Gordon Byron has said, ‘Any change threatens the moral foundations of our identity’.”

“What do you think, Albrecht?”

”I think it’s a doozy of an issue for our campaign.”

“You keep quoting Byron, what about Grant Gazberg?”

“He died you know.”

“Yes, I know.”

“We need a live person, and that person is now Gordon!”

“Okay, so knowing what associations people make lets you know how to, ‘push their buttons’!”

“Right! Keep them focused and following our leader.”

“Sounds kind of mindless to me.”

“Not mindless, according to Byron it is emotional and intuitive.”

“What does Macadamia want to do with this power?”

“Well, Gordan says we must, ‘Avenge the humiliation suffered by so many Americans.”

“Vengeance huh?”

“We just want people feeling it!”

“Yeah, I get that.”

“Here’s another one. If I say, ‘taxes’ what comes to mind?”

“Mid-April.”

“Okay, some people think of the deep state, or government giveaways of their hard-earned money.”

“The IRS has plenty of enemies.”

“We are going to defund them out of existence!”

“And what will the government do for money?”

“Byron has said, “Smaller government doesn’t need much money and there are better ways of getting revenue than income taxes.”

We move back from the front as they are wheeling in workstation panels for assembly.

The door to the basement stairs is locked even though the interior is being rebuilt.

“I remember a lot of tech equipment down there for the CAP.”

“The what?”

“The Cyber Anthropic Principle that’s what Chuck Newsome was investing in.”

“That area is strictly off limits.”

“You mean the space or the idea?”

“I don’t know anything about the CAP, but the basement area is only accessible to those with a pass.”

“I see, can I get one?”

“Have you got computer science expertise?”

“I want to see if all that equipment for CAP is still there.”

“Yeah, but, like, do you have a degree in computer science?”

“No.”

“You also have to apply the Company annex at PU.”

“Not the campaign?

“No, the tech company has an annex on the PU campus.”

 “What company?”

“Well, at PU, it’s called, The Middlesex Project.”

“Okay, aren’t they part of Fibonacci Corporation, where Rank Majors works?”

“You better ask Rank that one.”

We are back at the loading area.  Kemp is chatting with the Isuzu driver and her assistant who has her high school hoodie on. A lock of red hair falls from the front of the hood as she works on her phone.

“You still don’t have an automatic, do you?”

“No, Rank, but I do have a couple of old revolvers.”

“Are you carrying?”

“No, they are in the linen closet, at home.”

“Your wife will find them!”

“She knows they are in there.  Keeps them dry.”

“How much ammo do you have?”

“Not a round.”

“Buddy, you better get online and find some bullets for those old pistols.”

Albrecht steps forward onto the lift, raises it, and disappears into the truck.  The driver walks over to the cab in pink SnazE ‘Sports Walkers’ with yellow laces and turns to get her clipboard. She has a holster against the small of her back on a black web belt . Her red hair is combed back and bunched. Held with a comb.

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right. 

Deep purple clouds crowd low on the horizon, long and narrow like fuzzy blimps maneuvering to dock before sunset, behind the bare trees.

“Who are those two up there?”

I am walking up Oval Street hill from Wicket Street, with Steve Strether and Ossian.

“That’s Sophie on the right with her quarterstaff.”

“Her what?”

“That pole, she calls it her quarterstaff.”

“Oh, like Friar Tuck!”

“She claims to be a skilled and experienced user.”

“That must be Osiris Tarantula in the silvery metallic, puffer jacket.”

Ossian pulls hard to catch up. He gets distracted and stops to bark at a bird shadow, which leads Sophie to turn and look. 

“Hallow there!”

They have stopped on the steep slope. The road is clear but there is snow along the side. Ossian is in the ditch. His short legs sink into loose leaves under the snow as he scrambles to get at the white oak where squirrels chase each other up and down the trunk’s gray bark.

Steve pulls on Ossie’s leash and he looks back toward Sophie but turns and comes to Steve.

“Hi there, Sophie!”

We catch them up and Sophie introduces Osiris. Steve has trouble with his right foot.

Ossi has the bottom of Steve’s jeans in his teeth and then he embraces the top of his shoes, from behind, with his forepaws.

“He has tackled me!”

Osiris watches carefully.

“Is this a new skill?”

“He does this around the house if I walk around too far outside his agenda.”

“What is his agenda?”

“Often hard to say.”

“Does he want to go out?”

“He always wants to go out!

“So that’s it then.”

“No Osiris, he may want my attention for other reasons, such as making breakfast or retrieving something that is out of reach under the couch.”

“I get it!”

“Has he been watching a lot of football?”

“He doesn’t take much notice of TV.”

“From a human perspective, I would say, so much the better.”

“You must like some shows?”

“I don’t have a TV.

 “You are the only one I have met who doesn’t,”

“Oh, I believe it.”

“Don’t you feel out of touch?”

“Out of touch with what?”

“With what is going on, with news and entertainment.”

“It is our primary distractor, that, and FaceBook.”

“Oh, you are on Facebook then.”

“I was when it first came out but soon dropped it.”

Ossi has let go of Steve’s shoe and the bottom of his jeans.

“There is too much pathetic attention seeking and of course torrents of lies and nonsense.”

“Yes, I can’t imagine using their news feed.”

“No, people get uncritically engaged by these media.”

“Those who do are subject to every kind of chicanery.”

“Oh yes, it is as if they are whispering to a lover, unaware that the world is listening under their pillow.”

“A lot of the Jan 6th people found each other through FB.”

“It’s manly for older types. The young are on, Instagram and other media.”

 “What about keeping up with friends out of town or overseas?”

“Email is an ideal alternative.”

There is always Oanon, you know!”

“True Sophie, but you don’t have enough subscribers yet.” 

Sophie steps forward to pet Ossi.

Ossi tries to climb Sophie’s black corduroys. His nose has reached up under her long woolen navy-blue cape. Her silky yellow scarf has eluded him, though the ends reach the ground as she bends over.

She gathers her scarf.

“No, I have a small but select following.”

“You might call it a coterie!”

“You might use any number of names, Osiris but I prefer Oanon.”

“Well okay, if you want influence, you must find something outrageous to say.”

“Osiris, I am not about to go there.”

“That is the way to get attention, dear.”

“Yes, back to that again!”

We stroll on in silence as crows fly up towards the dead oak opposite Diddlie’s place. Ossi walks alongside Steve as we all continue up the hill. Osiris pulls up her hood against the cold breeze higher up.

“Art is better served by painting than TV.”

“TV is art, collaborative art, like movies.”

“Oh! So true Steve, there are so many arts served by TV.”

“So, Osiris, what’s your point?”

“My point is that persuasive art, PR for instance, has dominated TV ever since the beginning.”

“It has been a successful marketing technology.”

“Those ads are a great way to pay for content, free to the audience!”

“The content is generally irrelevant.”

“What do you mean? That’s why people turn it on!”

“Most of the money is in the advertising.”

“What about huge successes like the ‘Tonight Show’?”

“They have to be sensitive to their sponsors.”

“I think you are missing the important social influence of entertainment.”

“Sophie, what do you think?”

“I think clouds of meaning evaporate from TV shows, and we all inhale it.”

“Clouds? Sophie, you have lost me, again.”

“Commercial clouds support emotional dramas, action, and violence so much it fills the vapors.

“I would say money drives production, but attention drives content.”

‘You can say that, yes, attention is the main thing. It is hugely complicated. As complicated as a cloud of cigarette smoke dispersing in a production meeting.”

Ossi is pulling ahead of us, growling.

“Sophie, did you know my ancestor and namesake painted portraits.”

“Of course I do.”

Steve gives Ossi another treat. So, he stopped in front of us. Osiris 

 observes him.

“What a hungry little dog!”

“If he ever turns down a treat, we shall call the vet.”

Ossi finishes up and moves on a shorter length of leash, pulling hard.

“Well, my ancestor had a similar passion, but it was for painting.”

“Was this an American artist?”

“She worked in sixteenth-century Italy.”

“Oh, a Renaissance woman!”

“Yes, one of a growing number now getting recognition by historians.”

Steve holds Ossian back. He stands on his hind legs, supported by his harness looking up at Osiris.

“My ancestor saw with her eyes, Sophie sees with her heart.”

Ossian gets back on four paws.

“Do you mean discerns perhaps, Osiris?”

“Perhaps; the heart has been called, ‘the organ of spiritual perception’.”

“Who said that?”

“I don’t remember.”

“But that organ is a pump, a double pump in fact!”

“Oh, Steve! You are Steve, right?”

“Yup, here in Fauxmont, at least.”

“And your friend…”

Osiris looks over at me. Sophie interrupts.

“Osiris dear, that is Fred. He and Steve are both friends of mine and neighbors.”

“I am glad to meet you both. Let me explain to you, a little physiology.”

We have stopped outside Diddlie’s place at the top of the hill. 

Ossi, squats and Steve picks up after him with an old Washington Post bag. Now Ossi barks at three crows pecking something stringy on Diddlie’s driveway.

“Ah Steve, please, can you calm your little dog?”

He gives Ossi, another treat for his silence.

“Thank you, such a cute little guy!”

“He is still a pup.”

“So, Steve and Fred, did you know the ‘pump’ has about forty thousand neurons in it?”

“No, so it’s got a brain of its own!”

“Physiologically, neurons translate electrical signals into a chemical, called a neurotransmitter, to cross the synapses or gaps between them.” 

“Yes Osiris, I hope you guys notice the alternation between chemical and electrical?”

“Ah maybe, Sophie.”

“Steve, it is the mind-body thing. Chemical body and electrical mind.”

“You mean dualism.”

“No, cascading electrical/chemical interactions.”

“Are you saying we are dualistic or not?”

“I think both work together to make one thing, a sensation or a heartbeat or whatever.”

“An experience huh?”

“Right.”

“Are we talking about the organ or the metaphor?”

“A perceptive question Fred!”

Sophie loosens her long scarf to hang around her neck in several yellow coils.

“Yes! You see, heart, being, soul, mind, spirit: they are words with clouds of meaning.”

“Are you talking about metaphorical meanings?”

“You might say that.”

“Being is the only verb, I notice.”

“That’s how we use it, but they are all verbs, you know.”

“But not usually used that way.”

No, the verb “to heart” is hard to conjugate!”

“There is always: ’heartening’.”

“That is; to raise our spirits.”

“So that tells us something about spirits.”

“It does Fred, I will tell you that spirits are evoked in us. They do not dwell in trees or

cobwebs or in vapors.”

“You think spirits are in us, ‘not out there’.

“People think that spirits live outside themselves because, the movement is so strong, in certain places at certain times.”

Ossian has settled between Steve and me, still looking over at Diddlie’s driveway.  

“It is all a matter of association. That is what Oanon’s Orange Cat is all about, association.”

“Well, Sophie, most people have positive associations with cats.”

“Look at all the cat videos online, Fred!

“I was reading Oliver’s latest post last week Sophie, and he could just as well be talking about politics!”

“Oh yes Fred, the media are full of mystical and intuitive movements.”

“I don’t know what you two are talking about.”

“Steve I am talking about the difference, between objectivity which looks outward, and subjectivity which looks inward.”

“You sound like a philosopher Osiris.”

“I have a degree from Wagner College, in mysticism and  philosophy.”

The sun is down below the tree line. Ossi is barking and frantically trying to chase a squirrel within the restraint of his harness.

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.

Diddlie’s black hoody is pulled down across her forehead keeping out the damp wind.

“It was 29 degrees yesterday when I went out in the morning, to bundle up this goldenrod.”

“Yup, now we have wet wind.”

“I know. It’s at least forty.”

She picks up a bundle of dried goldenrod and carries it into the carport.

“Bring that other bundle, okay?”

I pick up the bundle lying under a tarp at the top of the driveway and push through the dead leaves blown up against the porch.

“You need to clear your leaves.”

“I called Mr. Fawkes about it yesterday.”

“Has he got a blower?”

“No, he rakes, and it takes forever!”

We leave the bundles standing upright in an empty trash can.

“Not quite, besides the gas-powered blowers release pollutants into the air.”

“Yeah, I can smell it.”

All conversation stops as the yard service at Max’s starts a leaf blower next door. Now another starts at a higher pitch.

The drought in August and September left the grass brown and cracks spread across patches of bare clay soil.

The blowers move around the corner of the house and the angry-insect buzz fades.

“Even the electric ones still blow dust, soil, and mold into the air.”

“Yeah, Fungus!”

“What do you mean, fungus?”

“It’s all over the truth!”

“You are not making any sense!”

“Fred, now you know what it is like!”

“Like what?”

“Like talking to you!”

She pulls on my arm and leads me further into the carport.

We pass Mr. Liddell’s hutch. 

He doesn’t stir. She opens the old wardrobe with the back cut out and finds a narrow steel door in the wall behind.

 “What happened to that beautiful polished wooden door?”

“I gave it to Lou in exchange for some work he did for me.”

I step through the wardrobe to the hidden door.

“Come on Fred! What are you afraid of?”

“The unknown!”

“Well, so you should be, but come on in.”

Diddlie gallops down the dark steep, cement stairs and flips a switch at the bottom. The stairwell is filled with dim orange light.

“Okay, honey, can you see now?”

We shout in the stairwell.

“Yes, Did. Why the lurid orange light?”

“It doesn’t attract bugs.”

“Good idea!”

“It is also LED. Serge says they are more efficient.”

I go down slowly to find her under brighter orange LEDs in the old bomb shelter .

“It is so quiet down here!”

“Yeah, you can hear your own brain buzz.”

She turns towards a small shelf.

“Here put on this mask.”

Latex gloves cover her fingers holding a mask.

“Why? Have you got COVID down here?”

 “No, can’t you smell it?”

“Well, it smells kind of like those rotting leaves up in the yard.”

“That is the fungus odor.”

“You remember, these cubbies?”

“Ahh, it is all Greek, right?”

“Well, that was the Queenie, speaking out of turn.”

“Where is Queenie?”

“I left her upstairs this time.”

“Okay.”

Diddlie gestures toward the wall of cubbies.

“Here is absolute truth, there’s hard truth, difficult truth, here, and embarrassing truth behind that yellow Chinese curtain.”

She reaches into one of the cubies and pulls out something like powdery paper.

“What is it?”

“It is one of my hard truths.”

“Why has it turned purple? Looks like it has disintegrated!”

“See, all the relative truths in those hanging baskets?”

“Yeah, they are filling the place.”

“Oh, look at all those alternative facts!”

The floor underneath the baskets is covered in crumbly lumps.

“Where did that come from?”

“They fall out of the relative truths.”

“Oh.”

“Now I’ll have to sweep all that up.”

“What about the embarrassing truths?’

“Oh, they are fine.”

“Now look at this!”

She pulls out a small object shaped like a toadstool, with a purple cap and yellow gills.

“This is the fungus I was talking about.”

“So that is eating up your files!”

“You got it, sweety.”

She snuggles up next to me and whispers through her mask.

“Aren’t you going to console me with a kiss?”

She has pulled her mask down.

I bend down to her and she pulls my mask aside. She embraces me forcefully. She is passionate. We separate our lips.

“See how good it feels to get out of your head?”

“Yes, you nearly pulled my tongue from its roots.”

My mask has fallen around my neck. Diddlie pulls her’s back up.

“Are you okay Fred?”

“Oh yeah, fine.”

“Pretty good first kiss, huh Fred!”

“A first, it was!”

“It has taken more than a decade!”

“What’s the hurry?”

“Is that what you were afraid of?”

“Not exactly.”

“Oh, you mean my kiss was, like, too intense for you?”

“No, kissing was not on my mind.”

She pulls on my hand.

“Well, why aren’t I surprised?”

“You tell me!”

“Does your temperature ever get over 98.6?”

“The flue tends to do that.”

“No silly! I am talking metaphorically.”

“I see.”

“No, you don’t!”

“Oh?”

“Because if could only see, you would kiss me again.”

“Okay, you are talking erotic temperature!”

“See that nice soft couch over there?”

“I do. You want to sit down?”

“Now you are getting it.”

We step over to the couch and sit down raising a cloud of fungus spores from the cushions.

We are both choking, despite our masks.

“HELLOW! Anybody home?”

Diddlie whispers to me.

“Who the hell could that be?”

“Sounds like Lark to me.”

“Shhh, keep quiet.”

We both choke.

“Maybe she will go away.”

The soles of her shoes scrap on the gritty steps.

“Did. are you down here?”

She has reached the bottom step and crunches some alternative facts on the floor.

Lark looks in.

“Oh! Am I interrupting something?”

Diddlie chokes,

YES!”

 Lark starts coughing too as she walks through the dusty orange air toward us.

“Well, let’s make it a threesome!”

Lark sits down next to me and raises another fungus-cloud.

We all cough together in a random pattern of straining lungs.

Diddlie chokes out to Lark that masks are by the door.

Choking, Lark gets up to find one.

“Okay, we better let the dust settle.”

We sit together breathing gently through our masks.

“Did., where have you been?”

“Home.”

“You don’t answer the phone or your door.”

Lark stops to adjust her mask.

“Oh, you weren’t kidding, was she Fred?”

“I don’t know.”

“Fred, I mean you two have been busy with each other, right? Romantically, I mean.”

“No, I only stopped by about twenty minutes ago.”

Well, Did. What’s going on?”

“I have an emergency.”

“What kind of emergency?”

“Fungus!”

“Lark, she means her files are rotting away due to fungus.”

“What files?”

“No one is supposed to know.”

“Come on Did. Let it out!”

“It’s my truth files.”

“Well, I have an emergency too, it is called Armond Macadamia, and its fake.”

“That guy must be a hundred by now!”

“It doesn’t matter, Did. They are running an electronic replica.”

“Yeah, sounds like the fungus has infected the electronics.”

“What fungus?”

“It is what we are all choking on!”

“I don’t know about that, but we have a reality crisis going on.”

“That isn’t going to fool anybody for long.”

“Oh yes, it is.”

“The thing is going to have to appear and do rallies and all that.”

“It already has.”

“No way.”

“That’s it. No one believes it isn’t really him, but it isn’t.”

 “I still don’t think it will work.”

“Oh! it could. They have made a breakthrough at PU.”

“Never heard about it.”

“No, because Macadamia’s money has funded it with billions of dollars over the past two or three years.”

“How is this thing going to shake hands and hold babies?”

“Somebody wears an electronic suit just like Mac’s.”

“You mean he is forcing them to keep all this under wraps?”

“Something like that.”

“It even smells of Mac’s Snaz “Testostronica” aftershave, his favorite.

“That stuff supposedly costs a thousand dollars a bottle.”

“Isn’t it supposed to be an aphrodisiac?”

“Don’t say they can do an electronic fuck!”

“Okay, I won’t.”

“So how do you know about it?”

“Remember Did., when the Elegant Ostrich closed?”

“Sure, there was all that about an electronic art project there.”

“That’s right, the Cyber Anthropic Interface. That was a cover story for the Macadamia thing.”

“You said it was at PU.”

“They used the old store as an offsite for secrecy.”

“Okay Lark, you still haven’t explained how you know any of this is true.”

“I have been talking to someone who worked on it.”

“Oh sure, how do you know this person is legit?”

“I used to see her when she worked at the Ostrich site.”

“Ah ha, and she is going to tell you, a journalist, all about it!”.

“That’s right. Her name will not be revealed, and she will get a lot of money when the story breaks.”

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.

It is dusk. I am sitting next to bel by a dogwood, with her overgrown smoke tree behind me in the newly fenced-in portion of their front yard. Gusts of wind blow dying oak leaves off their branches as five crows fly past and the leaves tumble, carried in the wind, and fall like drunken birds.

Bell is watching the sky.

“There go the evening crows.”

“They look purposeful, silently heading over the trees instead of landing in them.”

We sit in old and stained plastic Adirondack chairs. They used to be available at Snaz Super Stores for under twenty dollars. The bright blue, yellow and green, is muted by a layer of brown, an accumulation of spring tree sap, and jet exhaust.

We watch Ossian race around the yellowing mock oranges in pursuit of Leo, only a little bigger, who is visiting from next door.

Steve comes out the back door and sits down in the green chair next to bel.

“Look, that’s seven more, following those I saw from the kitchen window.”

An airliner passes over on its approach to Calvin Coolidge National Airport. Landing gear not yet visible as it descends gradually, well above the crows.  

“Fred, we often see crows flying towards the river about now.”

“I think they are going to roost, bel.”

“There’s security in numbers.”

Ossian has come to see Steve. His red leash is still attached. Panting, he puts his forepaws on Steve’s knees.

“You have trained him well, Steve.”

He hands me a small cube of dehydrated liver. Another gust brings more brown and grey leaves flying over us in the wind.

“Offer him this.”

Ossian moves off and jumps on my lap and I give him the treat. He tries to lick my face.

Bel points to the ground.

“Down, Ossi.”

He jumps down and Leo trots over and Ossi tries to nip his dangling ears.

 As the dogs run off, we watch the brilliant glow of the sun low behind the tree line, every twig and branch silhouetted in a vivid pattern of growth. More oak leaves rock and tumble, floating to the ground and some lodge in the hollies along the fence.

Steve points up towards the East.

“See the geese?”

“Yeah, must be about a dozen in that echelon.”

“There’s a lot of activity in the heavens tonight!”

“And no mosquitos, Fred.”

“No, I haven’t heard any crickets either.”

“They were subdued by those frosts last week.”

Steve finds a white oak leaf sliding off his shoulder where it landed after a long trip over the power lines from the huge tree across the street.

“Look, God has sent me a gift!”

He holds up the leaf by its petiole or stalk, turning it slowly.

It is light mottled reddish brown on one side, slightly curved with deep sinuses.

“How about that structure, Fred!”

“Yes, a fine specimen.”

He turns it so I can see the flat gray side.

“See those veins growing up from the stalk?”

“Yeah, like a diagram of the tree itself.”

“Yup, a trunk with branches.”

“Nature famously repeats itself wherever it can.”

“Don’t you find it mysterious?”

“I never thought of it that way, Steve.”

Bel holds out her hand.

“Let me see that thing.”

She holds it in one hand tracing the veins with her forefinger.

“It is a mystery to me why there is anything at all!”

“Wasn’t that Leibnitz’s question too?”

Steve watches bel examine the leaf.  “It was, Fred, and he gave God as the only possible answer.”

“So he did, and Spinoza claimed that it is impossible for there ever to have been nothing!”

Another gust brings faint sound of leaf-blowers from up the street.  We pause to watch the dogs.  Bel lets Ossian off-leash to chase Leo unencumbered.

 “I have been told God is love.”

“Well, Fred, he must have loved this perfect undamaged dead leaf.”

“I don’t buy the God is love idea.”

“Well, it is hard to find a concept of God.”

“I would say it is impossible, Fred!”

“So, what is all the ‘God-talk’ about?”

“Reassurance, hope, and faith, among other things.”

“That sounds about right.”

“A lot depends on how you talk about it.”

“Talk, grammatically, you mean?”

“No, Fred, the vocabulary.”

“As in ‘God is love’?”

“As in any sentence starting with, ‘God is.’.”

“Okay, go on!”

“Fred, ‘God is.’ that is all I can say.”

“That sentence may be grammatical but needs finishing!”

“Well, ah right, I might usually say, ‘I am happy’, or “I am finishing up” or ‘I am stuck in traffic’. See what I mean?”

“Not really.”

“They are all ways of ‘being me’.”

“That is true enough and the ways so many of us are ‘being’ at various times.”

“So, Fred, what about ‘being’ itself’?  

“As in, ‘I am’?”

“Right.”

“Yeah, ask Heidegger that one.”

“You remember his famous line?”

“Can’t say I do. I remember he goes on about, ‘being’, a lot.”

“Our Marty said: “Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.”

“Oh, he said that did he?”

“Yeah.”

“Where does that get us as far as ‘being’ goes?”

“I guess it takes me back to all the ways of being me that came up before.”

“Okay, we were talking about, ‘talking-about-God’.”

Steve puts his hand on bel’s shoulder. “According to Exodus, God tells Moses, ‘I am that I am’, in the St. James version, anyway.”

“Yeah, in other words, don’t ask for any more info.”

“Exactly, bel, God is. Say any more and you put it in the human condition.”

“Isn’t that the point about Jesus?”

“Oh yes! Jesus was God in the human condition.”

“You said ‘it’ for God, Steve?”

“Right, aside from the gender issue I am not into an anthropomorphic god.”

“Okay Steve, suppose God had a daughter instead of a son?”

“That brings up the gender issue and is still an anthropomorphism, Fred.”

Steve raises his hand from bel’s shoulder in a gesture for emphasis. “Christian tradition has God the Father, firmly in place.”

“Oh, I know, but find it misleading.”

“Aren’t Christians supposed to think of him that way, bel?”

Steve throws another stick for barking Leo and Ossi to chase.

“Well, it does make God accessible, or understandable.”

“Yeah, Fred, especially if you get along well with Dad!”

“And if you don’t, best think again!”

“The thing is, ‘being’ itself isn’t understandable.”

“What? Don’t we all know the verb to be, bel?”

“Sure, that’s just grammar. I mean being is experienced, not only an idea in mind.”

Steve throws another stick he breaks off a small fallen branch under the hydrangea next to him. “Now hear this: ’ peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus’.”

“Isn’t that Philippians?”

“I forget, Fred, but it seems to me to be talking about an experience, not an idea.”

“Bel, would you have it that God and being have that in common.”

“Well, sort of, Fred. We must be careful of concepts!”

Another gust rattles in the oaks and more leaves fly up into the evening light and settle as the air stills again.

“Bel, where’s my leaf?”

The leaf has blown off the arm of bel’s chair.

“My perfect leaf, where is it?”

Another gust rattles earthbound dry leaves around us.

“It has joined the throng skittering across our lawn.”

Steve offers Ossian another treat, as he gallops in soft crunchy strides through the throng to his chair. Then Leo comes too.

“Bel has a Buddhist approach to this.”

“I hear that, Steve.” 

The sky has darkened above us, but a glow still fills the treetops.

“Look at all those crows!”

“That’s over a dozen, Fred.”

“All still heading the same way.”

Bel looks up from a leaf that fell on her lap.

“Let’s not forget Jung, in all this!”

“Okay bel, I remember reading that he thought God was the unconscious.”

“That’s it!”

“So, you agree with him?”

“Well, think about what the idea of an all-knowing deity and the idea of the unconscious have in common.”

Steve has both dogs around him, barking. “What was that, bel?”

Steve throws another stick for the dogs to chase.

“I said, think about what ideas of god and the unconscious have in common.”

“Nothing much, I should say. One is a psychological term, and the other is the deity.”

“True, Fred! But they are both unknowable, yet they make themselves known.”

“Yes, the ‘unconscious’ can’t be known by definition!”

Steve taps his wife on the shoulder again. “It has been said that psychology came along to replace a deity for those who found the supernatural was no longer believable.”

“By whom?”

“Ahh, Jung, maybe. I can’t remember, bel.” 

“Well, psychology does offer a new vocabulary to talk about the problems we might discuss with God.”

“You mean prayer, right, bel?”

“If you like, Fred.”

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.

Steve Strether wants to show me a Venetian Renaissance painting called, ‘Feast of the Gods’, at the National Gallery.

https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.1138.html

“What is it about this painting, Steve?”

“I have been reading, Ovid over the years, and this work is derived from his “Feast”.

“Is that Greek or Roman?”

“Roman, ah, wait a minute. They’ve moved it.”

“What’s that Steve?”

“The Feast of the Gods used to hang in this room. It’s been a while since I looked at it.”

I walk on. Artie Bliemisch is unmistakable, walking ahead of me in her black jeans and dark blue sweatshirt with thick curly dark hair spread above it.  

“Here it is, Steve.”

“Oh! Over there, kind of in the hall.”

“Yeah, more people will see it passing by.”

“Passing by is right.” 

The bench I sat on to get a long-relaxed look, is gone.”

“Well, most people don’t spend much time looking.”

“Yes, there is a tendency to read the text and just take a few glances.”

Artie looks up from the ‘The Feast’.

Turning to take a look, she greets us with a circular wave, palm out.

“Well, there they are. All these deities lined up like they are posing for a laugh in the family photo.”

Artie looks over at Steve.

“This is suggestive if not lurid!”

“A lot of leering and leching.”

“It is a bacchanal Steve, I am surprised it hasn’t been banned!”

“They are only banning books, at the moment.”

“If these wannabe censors are so worried about what kids are reading, they ought to check out the internet.”

Artie is looking closely at the figure in a helmet and stays close in. Steve and I stand back to look at the whole picture.

“Look at that huge gold frame.”

“Like part of an altarpiece, Fred.”

Artie is still examining the surface.

“Nice job on that helmet.”

“Who’s that?”

“Fred, that’s Mercury, I think.”

“Yeah, see his caduceus.”

Artie doesn’t turn toward us.

“No, Fred, it is covered by his clothes.”

Steve chuckles at Artie.

“Not his penis, his herald’s staff.”

“Oh! that long thing.”

“Yes, so it is, with entwined snakes and wings at the top?”

“Bacchanal, did you say?”

“Boozing and feasting Artie, they are ancient Roman Gods, wood nymphs and a water nymph and such like.”

A young guy with tattoos swarming up his arm into the right sleeve of his tee-shirt looks over.

“It is out of Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Fasti, Book 1.”

“Yes, I’ve been reading it. Do you know anything about that woman on the right?”

“It is Lotis, the naiad, or water nymph.”

“So that’s what a water nymph looks like!”

“I doubt it, Fred.”

“Have you ever seen one?”

“No.”

“How can you tell?”

“She looks like a human!”

Artie turns to Steve.

“None of them look very god-like to me.”

The man with an inky epidermis comes over to us.

“No, they are dressed as 16th-century Venetians.”

“Oh! just regular folk.”

“No, probably wealthy elite, Artie.”

“Yeah, Steve, I guess your average Venetian was pretty ragged.”

The richly illustrated arm points out the adjacent text.

“The picture was commissioned by the Duke Alfonse D’Este to decorate the alabaster study in his castle at Ferrara.”

Artie has turned back to the painting.

“This is high-class porn, Steve.”

“Well, it is refined Renaissance porn.”

Our informant looks back at us from the wall text.

“He must have been a horney dude!”

Artie looks over to the teacher.

”Well, during the later Renaissance they painted all those naked women and how many men do we see?”

Steve steps forward.

“What about Michael Angelo’s Adam on the Sistine ceiling?”

“And, not so well known, are; Annibale Carracci who did a Bacchus, and Caravaggio showed it all in his cupid.”

”That’s right! The kid has his legs spread!”

 “Adam has his fig leaf in most renderings.”

“Alright, okay, there are some, but not many compared with all those female buttocks, bellies, and breasts!”

“Yes, so is all this porn or not?”

Our new friend steps over to Steve and me.

“We are looking at immortals. Beyond our judgment!”

Artie turns to us again.

”There’s really very little exposed.”

“It is all in their gestures and expressions.”

”Historically, there’s been a lot of prudery, polluting judgment. Has been for some time.”

“Well, those Romans were not prudes, and neither were their gods.”

Steve points toward Lotis.

“Is it porn if the gods do it?”

”If you believe they are gods that’s one thing. If you regard them as human that’s another.”

So the duke enjoyed some titillation while pretending these are just mythological figures.”

“I’ll leave this profound question to you!”

“Are you an Art historian?”

“Yeah, I am a teaching assistant at Prestige U.

“Okay, so tell us some more.”

Famously, you remember, Lotis, over on the far right, fell asleep, wine-drunk. Lusty Priapus, saw an opportunity to take advantage of her. 

He points out Priapus and the sleeping Lotis.

“See him bending forward to lift her skirt? He was betrayed when Silenus’s ass let out a raucous bray. Lotis was startled and pushed Priapus away, and they all laughed at him.”

“Okay, where are Selenus and his donkey?”

“Over there on the left.”

Our teacher steps over to point out the ass standing next to Silenus, a woodland deity.

“This mythological porn, or not, was rendered by three mortals.”

Steve steps over next to Artie for a closer look.

“They were as good as anyone around at the time, right?”

“Giovanni Bellini, the best, started it when he was in his eighties.”

“Good age in at that time!”

”It was his last major work.”

”The old guy did well to reach across this big painting.”

“That grove of trees spread all the way across in Bellini’s original.”

“And Titian did some work on it, right?”

”That’s right, Tiziano Vecelli in Italian.”

“So what did he paint?”

“As you can see, he painted over a lot of Bellini’s trees to put in that hill behind the party.”

”Yeah, he added some waterfalls too.” 

 “Don’t forget Dosso Dossi.”

“Who?”

 “Dosso Dossi made the first alteration, before Titian, in response to the Duke.”

Artie moves back near the teacher.

“Sounds like a square dance call!”

“That’s Dosey doe.”

“Dosso was messing with Giovanni’s masterpiece!”

“What the Duke pays for, the Duke gets.”

“What did that guy paint?”

“Dosso is credited with the landscape at left and added the pheasant and bright green foliage to the tree at upper right.”

“Artie, I thought you would know all about this stuff.”

“Why Fred?”

“Because you are an artist yourself.”

“I am interested in paint and perception not so much the literary stuff.”

Our teacher has moved on joined by his long-sleeved companion. With ink dense on his calves.

“Okay, so what do you see?”

“It is an oil painting on canvas for one thing. Looks like there are three seams. See that one above the figure with a Delft bowl above his head?”

“Okay”

 “Bellini started out using tempera poplar panels.”

“That’s egg tempera?”

“Yeah, mix the yoke with powdered pigment and lay on.”

“As simple as that?”

“No Fred, that’s just the basic idea.”

Artie points out the foreground.

”Take a look at how these pebbles are rendered, look at the values!”

”Yes they are blended patches of color.”

”That’s right, you have to get retinal!”

“What do you mean?”

”Be conscious of what is on your retina don’t recognize objects.”

”Like a pebble, you mean.”

“Like anything you can name.”

“What about that grove of young saplings there, on the right.”

”You are back to nouns, Fred.”

“The sun seems to be low in the sky behind them.”

“Yeah, nice gradation from yellowish to blue above the green hill.”

”You think it is sunrise or sunset, Fred?”

“It can’t be sunrise. They would all be passed out by then.”

“Well, look at the empty cup that has rolled into the foreground.”

“Yes, it could be a sign of growing intoxication.”

“Intoxicated with lust or alcohol?”

“Both I should say.”

Artie moves closer again to take a close look at the surface.

“You guys are looking at the illustration.”

”Well, that is why the painting has a title.”

“Look here, Steve, there is kind of a dent.”

Artie points to a scratch in the surface, in the foliage above the blond woman’s head.

“Yeah, I think it has been restored since I last looked.”

“There’s too much glare from the lights.”

Artie gets out her phone and snaps a picture of the cup in the foreground.

“Look at that detail! Those highlights are like Canaletto!”

“Who is this guy with his hand in the girl’s lap?”

Steve scans the picture.

“Fred, you mean the one with a bowl of fruit in front of him?”

”He must be a Satyr.”

“He must?”

”Yeah, they were famously lusty.”

Artie points out the head.

“Okay, take a careful look at his head.”

“Our teacher is gone!”

”Just look, Fred. You don’t need him.”

”I am looking. It is turned toward the nymph, or whatever.”

“It doesn’t look right.”

“What do you mean, Artie?”

“It is too big and isn’t attached to the neck properly.”

“It must be! It was painted by a great master of the Renaissance!”

Steve is in on this.

“Fred, forget what you know and just trust your eyes.”

Artie is examining the figure.

“Well, it looks to me like a broken doll with a head too big and its fixed back on crooked!”

“Don’t forget, two different artists have meddled with it since Bellini.”

”Fred, can’t you see it?”

“Ah, maybe.”

Steve is examining the bottom right.

“Check the wooden bucket, down here.”

Artie is looking

“There’s a piece of paperer attached to the side.”

“It is Giovanni Bellin’s signature.”

“Dated 1514, how about that, Steve!”

“He is lucky no one took that bucket away over the passing centuries.”

“Or soaked the paper off, dipping it in a stream for a refill!”